Library  of 
-  Van  I  lew 


OC.Van  Liew 


PRACTICAL, 


LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY 


BY 

WILLIAM  0.  KROHN,  PH.D.  (¥ALE), 

PROFESSOR  OF  PSYCHOLOGY,   UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS,  CHAMPAIGN,  ILL. 


CHICAGO 

THE  WERNER  COMPANY 
1895 


v 


COPYRIGHT,  1894, 
BY  THE  WERNER  COMPANY, 
CHICAGO. 

PKACT'L  I.ES.  PSYC'Y. 

.!:•  -  -    ^ 


PEEFAOE. 


WITHIN  the  past  year  the  author  has,  at  various  institutes  and 
other  gatherings  of  teachers,  delivered  lectures  on  Psychology, 
nhiefly  on  those  phases  that  must  and  do  come  in  for  a  large 
share  of  consideration  on  the  part  of  every  successful  teacher. 
The  speculative  form  which  Psychology  sometimes  assumes 
found  no  place  in  those  discussions,  but  only  such  features  as 
are  quite  in  touch  with  the  ordinary  experience  of  the  average 
teacher  in  our  common  schools.  The  writer  was  surprised,  and  at 
the  same  time  very  much  gratified,  at  the  intense  interest  they 
/evoked.  At  the  solicitation  of  a  large  number  of  these  same 
teachers,  the  lectures  have  accordingly  been  gathered  together, 
/ind,  with  slight  modifications  and  the  advantage  of  much  addi- 
tional material,  are  now  presented  in  book  form. 

The  style  has  not  been  changed  from  that  employed  in  the 
lectures,  viz.,  simple,  direct  discourse,  because  the  author  desires 
that  the  teachers  whom  he  has  already  addressed  will  feel  that 
he  had  them  in  mind  in  preparing  this  book,  as  he  had  when  writ- 
ing the  original  lectures,  and  also  that  the  friendly  acquaintance 
which  was  thereby  established  shall  in  no  wise  be  dampered  by 
the  high-sounding  phrases  that  are  sometimes  manufactured 
into  book  language. 

The  terms  "  Mental  Science  "  and  "  Psychology  "  are  vague  to 
the  person  who  has  not  been  schooled  in  the  discussions  of  the 
purely  speculative  branches.  But  here  we  shall  dispense  with  all 
metaphysical  language  and  get  along  without  technical  terms. 

543 1t8  (3) 


4  PREFACE. 

The  writer  has  avoided  "pedagogical  consciousness,"  "  icy  cogni- 
tions of  thought,"  "  primordial  elements,"  and  the  like,  simply 
because  he  cherishes  the  desire  that  the  book  shall  be  character- 
ized by  a  practical  ring  rather  than  a  scholastic  rattle. 

It  is  hoped  that  all  who  read  this  book,  and  especially  the 
common  school  teacher,  will  consider  it  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  a  collection  of  personal  letters  in  which  only  the  more  im- 
portant mental  facts  are  discussed;  the  object  and  aim  being  to 
create  and  develop  tact  on  the  part  of  the  teacher,  that  he  may 
be  able  to  read  the  child's  mind  aright  and  thus  be  better  quali- 
fied to  minister  to  the  wants  of  the  growing  child-nature  as  this 
unfolds  itself  day  by  day.  The  greatest  pedagogical  need  of  our 
times  is  child  study,  and  if  the  author  only  quickens  the  interest 
of  teachers  in  this  line  he  shall  be  more  than  satisfied  and  fully 

repaid  for  every  effort  he  has  made. 

WILLIAM  0.  KROHN. 
CHAMPAIGN,  ILL.,  January  15, 1894. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

PREFACE,      ....  ....          3 

LESSON  I. 
THE  SERVICE  OF  PSYCHOLOGY  TO  THE  TEACHER,  ....          9 

LESSON  II. 
PSYCHOLOGY  DEFINED  AND  DESCRIBED, 15 

LESSON  III. 
THE  METHODS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY,    ...  ...        21 

LESSON   IV. 
THE  CONNECTION  BETWEEN  BODY  AND  MIND,       ....        35 

LESSON  V. 
THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM, 40 

LESSON  VI. 
THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS, 57 

LESSON  VII. 
THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS  (Continued),        ....        74 

LESSON  VIII. 
SENSATION, 

GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS— SENSATIONS  OF  TASTE  AND  SMELL,  95 


VI 


CONTENTS. 


LESSON  IX. 

SENSATION  (Continued").  PAGE 

THE  TEMPERATURE  SENSE  — SENSATIONS  OF  PRESSURE  AND  SENSATIONS 
OF  CONTACT,  .  ....  .  .  107 

LESSON  X. 
SENSATION  (Continued'). 

THE  MUSCLE  SENSE  —  THE  ORGANIC  SENSATIONS  —  THE  JOINT  AND 
TENDON  SENSATIONS— SENSATIONS  OF  THE  POSITION  OF  THE  BODY 
AS  A  WHOLE —SENSATIONS  OF  ROTATION,  ....  117 

LESSON  XI. 
SENSATION  (Continued}. 

VISION, 124 

LESSON  XII. 
SENSATION  (Continued}. 

HEARING,       ..........       136 

LESSON   XIII. 
DEVELOPMENT  OP  THE  SENSES, 150 

LESSON  XIV. 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES  (Continued), '  164 

LESSON  XV. 

THE  CONTENTS  OF  A  CHILD'S  MIND  ON  ENTERING  SCHOOL,    .         .      177 

LESSON  xyi. 

THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE, 188 

LESSON  XVII. 
HABIT,         ....  207 

LESSON  XVIII. 
ATTENTION,          ,,,,,,,,  221 


CONTENTS.  vii 

LESSON  XIX.  PAGE 

ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS,  ....      244 

LESSON  XX. 
MEMORY,     ....  .  .256 

LESSON  XXI. 
IMAGINATION,       .         .  ...      276 

LESSON  XXII. 

REASONING,          .  ...      306 

LESSON  XXIII. 
THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  WILL,        .  .....      337 

LESSON  XXIV. 
THE  TIME  RELATIONS  OF  MENTAL  PHENOMENA,    ....      357 

LESSON  XXV. 

METHODS   OF  TESTING  AND  MEASURING  THE  MENTAL  FACULTIES, 

ESPECIALLY  MEMORY  AND  ATTENTION  IN  SCHOOL  CHILDREN,      370 

LESSON  XXVI. 
CHILD-STUDY:    THE  BASIS  OF  EXACT  PEDAGOGICAL  METHODS,  .       381 

APPENDIX. 
THE  KINDERGARTEN  AND  CHILD  DEVELOPMENT,  ....      392 


"  That  former  age  in  which  every  one  thought  that  trades 
must  be  established  by  bounties  and  prohibitions;  that 
manufacturers  needed  their  materials  and  qualities  and 
prices  to  be  prescribed;  and  that  the  value  of  money  could 
be  determined  by  law;  was  an  age  which  unavoidably 
cherished  the  notions  that  a  child's  mind  could  be  made 
to  order;  that  its  powers  were  to  be  imparted  by  the  school- 
master; that  it  was  a  receptacle  into  which  knowledge  was 
to  be  put  and  there  built  up  after  its  teacher's  ideal.  In 
this  broader  era,  however,  we  are  beginning  to  see  that  there 
is  a  natural  process  of  mental  evolution  which  is  not  to  be 
disturbed  without  injury;  that  we  may  not  force  upon  the 
unfolding  mind  our  artificial  forms ;  but  that  Psychology, 
also,  discloses  to  us  a  law  of  supply  and  demand,  to  which 
if  we  would  not  do  harm,  we  must  conform." 

—HERBERT  SPENCER. 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


LESSON  I. 

THE  SERVICE   OF  PSYCHOLOGY  TO  THE  TEACHER. 

You  have  often  heard  it  said  that  the  teacher  needs  to  know 
Psychology  because  it  is  his  business  to  educate  the  mind,  and 
yet  this  mere  statement  has  not  convinced  you  of  the  real  value 
of  Psychology.  It  can  not  convince  anyone. 

Sometimes  we  are  told  by  those  older  and  wiser  than  we, 
that  we  should  pursue  certain  studies  because  of  their  value  as 
mental  drill.  We  were  taught  geometry,  portions  of  arithmetic 
like  permutation,  alligation,  and  many  meaningless  definitions, 
because  they  induced  mental  discipline  rather  than  for  their  prac- 
tical value.  Some  may  have  told  you  that  this  is  one  reason  why 
you  should  study  Psychology.  I  believe  I  have  seen  this  stated 
in  many  books  myself.  Let  me  tell  you  that  if  Psychology  is  to 
be  of  no  practical  value  to  you,  you  should  by  all  means  leave  it 
alone.  Steer  clear  of  it  or  anything  else  that  will  not  appeal  to 
your  practical  interests  as  a  teacher  and  student.  The  chief  ob- 
ject of  instruction  is  knowledge,  and  you  can  not  acquire  knowl- 
edge of  any  sort  without  gaining  the  mental  drill  as  well.  The 
"  mental  drill "  comes  of  itself.  But  it  is  one  of  the  chief  articles  of 
my  creed  that  Psychology  is  a  study  of  immense  practical  value, 
that  it  necessarily  hinges  on  and  joins  itself  to  every  question  con- 
nected with  daily  life.  It  can  be  made  of  the  greatest  practical 
value  to  the  teacher,  and  that  is  the  only  sort  of  Psychology  we 
want  as  teachers.  Nineteenth  century  teachers  need  and  demand 
nineteenth  century  Psychology  and  not  the  scholastic  discussions 
that  smack  of  the  dark  ages.  The  Psychology  of  the  teacher  of 

(9) 


10  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

to-day  is  not  made  up  from  old  musty  manuscripts  that  have 
been  found  buried  in  ancient  copper  cylinders;  its  data  are  gained 
from  observing  the  child's  living,  growing,  active  mind  in  all  its 
phases  as  it  presents  itself  to  the  teacher  from  day  to  day  the 
year  through.  So,  then,  let  me  insist  that  you  study  Psychology 
for  practical  reasons.  A  man  who  intends  becoming  a  high-class 
architect  studies  descriptive  geometry,  not  merely  because  it  will 
develop  his  mind  but  because  of  the  use  it  will  be  to  him ;  so  you 
should  study  Psychology  because  you  are  persuaded  that  the 
knowledge  gained  thereby  will  make  you  a  more  successful 
teacher,  i.  e. ,  a  more  tactful  teacher. 

But  you  at  once  ask  —  How  will  it  do  this?  How  can  Psychol- 
ogy make  me  a  better  teacher?  Let  us  first  answer  the  question, 
What  is  teaching?  In  the  first  place  we  will  agree  that  to  teach 
is  not  to  impart  instruction,  for  there  is  no  way  by  means  of 
which  the  smallest  scrap  of  knowledge  can  be  conveyed  from  the 
mind  of  the  teacher  to  that  of  the  pupil.  Cramming  facts  and 
hearing  recitations  is  not  teaching.  We  all  know  that  all  educa- 
tion is  self-education,  that  the  child's  mind  must  be  aroused  by 
the  teacher  to  act  in  and-  for  itself.  To  teach  is  to  excite  the 
child's  mind  to  activity  —  i.  e.,into  activity  which  would  not  have 
taken  place  without  being  thus  evoked. 

The  object  and  aim  of  all  education,  in  home  or  school,  is  to 
make  the  best  citizen  possible.  I  mean,  only  that  education 
suffices  which  makes  a  maw — a  perfected  individual — rounded  out, 
full  and  complete  —  mentally,  physically,  morally.  Any  system 
of  education  which  neglects  this  in  any  respect  is,  just  in  that  far, 
defective.  We  know,  then,  what  we  want  the  child  to  become — the 
ideal  citizen.  We  know  he  is  not  this  when  he  comes  to  school 
the  first  day,  nor  the  second,  nor  the  next.  Indeed  some  of  us 
despair  of  ever  making  ideal  citizens  of  some  of  our  pupils— but 
why  should  we? 

Right  here  is  one  of  the  many  places  where  Psychology  helps 
the  teacher.  By  adopting  the  methods  of  modern  Psychology 
the  teacher  can  learn  just  what  are  the  contents  of  the  child's 
mind  on  entering  school,  He  can  also,  by  the  aid  of  this  same 


SERVICE  OF  PSYCHOLOGY  TO  THE  TEACHER.  11 

experimental  Psychology,  ascertain  the  child's  capacities  in  all 
the  more  important  lines  —  such  as  the  memory  power,  and  its 
power  of  attention.  The  teacher,  then,  has  two  things  before 
him  —  (1)  the  pattern,  i.  e.,  the  ideal  citizen  which  he  wishes  the 
child  to  become,  and  (2)  the  actual  child  before  him,  j.  e.,  the  raw 
material.  But  the  most  important  matter  is  the  third  point,  viz. : 
What  methods  of  teaching  can  be  best  employed  to  convert  this 
untutored  child  —  this  raw,  crude  material  into  the  finished  prod- 
uct— the  ideal  citizen?  This  is  the  most  difficult  question  of  all. 
This  is  the  question  that  requires  the  most  tact  and  skill  on  the 
part  of  the  teacher  in  effecting  the  proper  solution.  But  at  the 
same  time  it  is  the  question  toward  the  solution  of  which  Psy- 
chology contributes  the  most  readily  and  furnishes  the  largest 
amount  of  help.  Even  the  most  crude  and  undeveloped  Psychol- 
ogy will  tell  us  to  select  those  subjects  for  study  that  will  be  of 
the  most  practical  use.  We  would  hardly  teach  the  child  to  sing 
Italian  opera  before  we  would  teach  it  to  read  and  spell  and 
count.  We  would  not  insist  upon  it  making  a  Delsartian  bow  or 
knowing  how  to  waltz  before  teaching  it  some  of  the  first  princi- 
ples of  hygiene.  Even  the  Indian  teaches  his  child  to  bend  the 
bow  before  allowing  him  to  be  adorned  with  feathers  and  paint. 
Humboldt  tells  us  that  an  Orinoco  Indian,  though  quite  regard- 
less of  bodily  comfort,  will  yet  labor  for  a  fortnight  to  purchase 
pigment  wherewith  to  make  himself  admired ;  and  that  the  same 
woman  who  would  not  hesitate  to  leave  her  hut  without  a  fragment 
of  clothing  on,  would  not  dare  to  commit  such  a  breach  of  deco- 
rum as  to  go  out  unpainted.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  colored 
beads  and  trinkets  are  much  more  prized  by  wild  tribes  than  cal- 
icos or  broadcloths.  Captain  Speke  tells  us  of  his  African  at- 
tendants that  they  strutted  about  in  goat-skin  mantles  when  the 
weather  was  fine;  but  when  it  was  wet  took  them  off, folded  them 
up,  and  went  about  naked,  shivering  in  the  rain.  So  it  is  in  a  less 
degree  with  the  young  "  aborigine"  who  presents  himself  at  the 
school-room  door  in  all  parts  of  our  broad  land.  He  must  be 
taught  the  useful,  practical  things.  It  is  only  thus  that  his  mind 
can  become  better  developed.  It  is  only  thus  that  he  can  be  made 


12  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

to  become  what  we  desire  him  to  be  — the  ideal  man.  But  would 
you  develop  him  in  only  one  direction?  No  indeed.  You  are 
seeking  for  a  general  development  of  all  his  powers— not  a  single 
one  which  is  to' be  developed  at  the  expense  of  the  others.  Pitch- 
ing baseball  gives  a  trained  eye  and  obedient  arm  and  hand,  and 
yet  you  want  your  pupil  to  be  more  than  a  baseball  pitcher. 

So,  then,  the  real  teacher,  who  has  a  true  conception  of  his 
work  and  mission,  turns  to  Psychology,  and  with  its  aid,  and  by 
means  of  its  conclusions,  settles  three  things:  (1)  What  is  this 
child  pupil  as  he  presents  himself  to  me  ?  What  are  the  contents 
of  his  young  growing  mind?  What  are  his  powers  and  capaci- 
ties as  he  now  stands  before  me?  (2)  What  do  I  desire  him  to 
become?  Into  what  product  should  I  conscientiously  labor  to 
fashion  and  mold  him?  and  (3)  What  method  must  be  employed 
in  order  that  these  aims  and  ideas  may  be  realized?  What 
knowledge  is  of  most  worth  in  developing  the  child  mind  into  the 
perfected  type  of  mental  life  and  action?  You  will  find  that 
Psychology,  in  its  modern  experimental  form,  will  be  your  chief 
help.  By  it  you  can  observe  the  precise  effect  which  the  acquir- 
ing of  this  or  that  piece  of  knowledge  will  have  on  the  mind,  and 
in  this  way  be  enabled  to  estimate  its  value  as  an  agency  in  un- 
folding the  child's  latent  mental  powers.  It  is,  of  course,  very 
important  to  have  an  aim.  You  must  know  what  you  are  aim- 
ing at  as  a  teacher.  Unless  you  have  settled  this  you  can  never 
succeed.  You  may  just  as  well  tear  your  certificate,  or  other 
credentials,  to  shreds  and  scatter  the  bits  to  the  winds,  if  you 
have  not  a  definite  purpose  in  mind  with  reference  to  your 
pupils.  How  could  an  architect  build  an  attractive  house  if  he 
began  to  construct  it  without  a  plan,  and  worked  from  day  to 
day  without  having  in  mind  a  picture  of  the  house  he  was  going 
to  build.  If  the  blacksmith  or  wheelwright  must  have  in  mind 
an  image  of  the  thing  he  is  about  to  make,  how  can  you,  as 
teachers,  hope  to  succeed  with  the  children,  unless  you  have  the 
clearest  conception  of  what  you  wish  them  to  become  as  a  result 
of  your  leadership  ?  Of  course  no  fixed  plan  can  be  given  that 
will  serve  all  teachers  in  all  cases  and  circumstances,  You  must 


SERVICE  OF  PSYCHOLOGY  TO  THE  TEACHER.  13 

make  your  own  plan,  and  besides  your  plan  you  must  have 
practical  ability,  i.  e.,  the  ability  that  is  gained  as  a  result  of 
close  study  and  observation.  When  a  noted  general  was  on  a 
famous  campaign,  he  desired  to  bridge  a  certain  swollen  stream. 
He  called  his  engineering  corps  together  and  told  them  what  he 
wanted.  They  retired  and  were  occupied  many  hours  drawing  the 
plans,  delaying  the  entire  army,  and  thus  endangering  the  fate  of 
the  whole  of  that  brilliant  campaign.  While  the  engineers  were  still 
at  work  draughting  the  plans,  a  sturdy  carpenter  approached 
the  now  impatient  General  and  said,  as  he  doffed  his  cap,  "  Gen- 
eral, the  bridge  is  built  [and,  referring  to  the  plans],  but  the 
picter  isn't  drawed  yet."  You  see  the  application.  It  is  the  old, 
well-tried  principle,  safe  always :  "  Learn  to  do  by  doing." 

As  teachers  you  will  often  find  yourselves  handicapped  by 
text-books  which  are  apt  to  be  very  inefficient.  Here,  as  else- 
where, Psychology  will  come  to  your  aid  in  selecting  the  material 
that  will  be  of  the  most  value  to  your  pupils.  We  must,  within 
limitations,  draw  up  our  own  curriculum  as  soon  as  we  know  the 
mental  make-up  of  our  pupils.  The  order  of  studies  that  is  best 
fitted  to  develop  the  pupils  of  one  school  may  not  be  at  all  suita 
ble  in  another.  "Life  is  short"  —  and  school  life  is  shorter — so 
we  are  under  moral  obligations  to  so  arrange  the  studies  that  the 
time  of  each  pupil  may  be  employed  to  the  greatest  advantage. 
To  do  this  we  must  settle  the  relative  value  of  different  kinds  of 
knowledge.  Spencer  has  clearly  shown  that  much  that  is  called 
" History"  in  our  schools  is  of  little  or  no  value.  The  law  of 
mental  progress  is  always  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract,  and 
yet  in  spite  of  this,  highly  abstract  subjects,  as  grammar,  which 
should  come  quite  late,  are  begun  very  early.  Political  geogra- 
phy, with  its  countless  definitions,  dead  and  uninteresting  to  the 
child,  is  also  begun  in  the  primary  grades,  while  physical  geogra- 
phy, naturally  attractive  to  the  child,  is  in  a  great  part  passed 
over.  The  teacher  must  in  a  measure  throw  out  those  parts  of 
the  average  text-book  that  are  unimportant  and  supply  additions 
to  those  parts  that  are  important  and  useful,  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  about  the  most  rapid,  most  healthful,  child  develop- 


14  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ment.  It  is  a  settled  fact  that  mind  is  a  real,  existing  thing.  It 
is  also  just  as  much  an  undisputed  fact  that  the  mind  develops 
according  to  certain  immutable  laws  just  as  the  body  develops 
in  accord  with  certain  immutable  laws.  If,  then,  the  evolution  of 
intelligence  in  the  child  conforms  to  laws,  does  it  not  follow  inevi- 
tably that  education  can  be  rightly  guided  only  by  a  knowledge 
of  these  laws?  It  is  the  height  of  absurdity  for  us  to  suppose 
that  we  can  properly  regulate  the  process  of  mental  growth  and 
development  without  understanding  the  nature  of  the  process. 
The  teacher  who  "  keeps  school "  and  is  ignorant  of  the  truths  of 
Psychology  will  often  withhold  that  class  of  facts  that  would  do 
his  pupils  the  most  good,  and  at  the  same  time  forcibly  adminis- 
ter those  that  are  distasteful,  and  therefore  harmful,  or  give  them 
the  proper  subjects  in  the  wrong  way  and  in  the  wrong  order. 
No  man  should  pilot  a  boat  unless  he  knows  the  nature  of  his 
craft  and  is  familiar  with  the  waters  in  which  he  sails.  Who  would 
ride  on  a  railroad  train  if  he  knew  its  engineer  to  be  a  novice  who 
had  never  before  had  his  hand  on  the  throttle  and  knew  not  the  func- 
tion of  the  safety  valve  ?  Or,  if  he  were  ever  so  skilled  in  the  princi- 
ples of  steam  would  you  trust  your  life  to  him  if  he  knew  not  the 
system  of  train  signals  nor  the  rules  of  the  road  with  reference  to 
meeting  and  passing  trains  and  had  no  "time  card"  before  his 
eye?  Much  more  might  a  parent  trust  a  physician  who  knows 
nothing  either  of  anatomy  or  physiology  to  care  for  his  child, 
than  to  trust  a  so-called  teacher  who  knows  absolutely  nothing 
of  the  principles  according  to  which  the  mind  unfolds  and 
develops. 

Remember  then— The  development  of  children,  in  mind  as  well 
as  in  body,  always  obeys  certain  great  laws ;  that  unless  these 
laws  are  in  some  measure  conformed  to  by  parents  and  teachers, 
mental  defects  will  occur,  and  that  only  when  these  laws  are  con- 
scientiously followed  and  completely  conformed  to,  can  the  child- 
mind  be  developed  to  its  full  capacity— a  mind  rich  in  its  strength 
and  supreme  power.  Judge  then  for  yourself  whether  all  teachers 
should  or  should  not  strive  assiduously  to  learn  what  these  laws 
of  the  best  mental  growth  actually  are. 


LESSON  II. 

PSYCHOLOGY  DEFINED  AND  DESCRIBED. 

IN  the  last  lesson  I  sought  to  make  clear  to  you  that  Psychol- 
ogy will  help  you,  as  teachers,  along  three  different  lines.  It  will 
help  you  to  learn  just  what  the  average  child  actually  is  as  he  enters 
your  school ;  it  will  help  you  to  decide  just  what  is  best  for  this 
child  to  become,  just  what  aim  you  ought  to  have  in  mind  with  re- 
spect to  his  development;  and  it  will  also  help  you  to  decide  upon 
the  best  method  of  realizing  this  aim.  But  we  have  not  yet  an- 
swered the  question  —  What  is  Psychology?  To  give  answer  to 
this  question  shall  be  my  endeavor  in  this  chapter. 

Every  text-book  you  pick  up  will,  somewhere  between  its 
covers,  define  Psychology  as  the  "  Science  of  the  Mind."  That  is 
the  shortest  definition  that  can  be  given.  In  fact,  I  think  it  has 
little  else  besides  its  shortness  to  commend  it  as  a  definition. 
For  it  is  at  once  found  to  be  insufficient  in  that  it  immediately 
provokes  another  question,  viz :  What  is  mind?  And  this  is  an 
exceedingly  difficult  question  to  answer  clearly  and  in  few  words. 
You  remember  the  story  of  the  old  philosopher  who  was  asked, 
"What  is  matter?"  and  answered  "Never  mind."  And  when 
asked,  "  What  is  mind?  "  replied  "  No  matter."  But  the  question, 
"What  is  mind?"  must  not  be  hedged  in  any  such  way.  Of 
course,  it  can  not  be  formally  defined  any  more  than  matter  can 
be  formally  defined.  But  it  can  be  described,  and  that  is  much 
better  than  a  formal  definition.  We  can  best  tell  what  a  thing  is 
by  relating  what  it  d  oes.  This  is,  in  a  sense,  the  whole  business  of 
Psychology  — to  describe  the  mind  by  telling  what  it  does,  and 
for  that  reason  we  shall  be  better  able  at  the  close  of  this  treatise 
to  define  mind  than  at  the  beginning.  But  we  can  give  a  tenta- 
tive definition  that  will  certainly  help  us. 

(15) 


16  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

By  the  term  "  mind  "  we  mean  anything  and  everything  that 
is  comprehended  under  the  little  word  "I,"  when  we  say  "I 
think,"  "I  desire  this  or  that,"  "I  feel,"  "I  see,"  and  the  like- 
that  is,  by  mind  is  meant  the  subject  of  the  mental  states. 
When  you  describe  the  orange  you  say— it  is  yellow,  round, 
juicy,  luscious,  has  weight,  etc.;  but— what  is  the  orange?  Why, 
the  thing  that  has  the  qualities  — the  thing  that  is  yellow, round, 
juicy,  etc.  So  we  find  the  mind  is  that  real  existing  thing  that 
feels,  thinks,  knows,  perceives,  desires  and  chooses.  We  know  it 
is  a  non-material  thing  and  has  no  existence  in  space  as  material 
things  have.  You  can  not  touch  a  thought  or  feeling  as  you  can 
the  orange,  but  you  can  have  just  as  certain,  yes  more  certain, 
evidence  of  the  real  existence  of  mind,  than  you  have  of  the 
existence  of  material  things  outside  of  us. 

It  is  indeed  the  business  of  Psychology  to  tell  us  what  the 
mind  is  — to  tell  us  what  the  mind  does;  how  it  is  that  the  mind 
has  sensations  of  taste,  smelling,  seeing,  hearing  and  the  like; 
how  it  behaves  under  different  conditions  and  surrounding  cir- 
cumstances ;  how  it  is  affected  by  the  different  conditions  and 
states  of  the  body,  and  how  it  in  turn  affects  the  body.  Psy- 
chology must  tell  us  whether  or  not  the  mind  acts  during  sleep, 
and  if  it  does  act  during  sleep,  does  it  do  so  under  the  same  con- 
ditions as  in  the  wakeful  state?  Can  the  mind  become  fatigued, 
and  if  it  does  become  tired,  under  what  conditions  can  it  best 
recover  from  this  fatigue?  Are  there  periods  when  the  mind  can 
accomplish  more  than  at  other  times  ?  Which  is  the  best  time  of 
day  for  hard  mental  work?  In  how  far  is  mind  affected  in  its  ac- 
tivity by  the  conditions  of  the  weather,  by  the  season  of  the  year, 
by  the  food  supply?  And  then,  according  to  what  laws  does  the 
mind  develop  — are  there  times  of  rapid  growth  ?  Does  the  mind 
develop  more  rapidly  at  six  years  of  age  than  at  thirteen? 
Which  is  capable  of  the  greatest  mental  effort  —  the  child  whose 
body  is  growing  rapidly  — the  overgrown  child  — or  the  child 
whose  body  is  growing  slowly?  In  which  do  the  mental  pow- 
ers develop  more  rapidly — in  the  boy  or  girl?  What  are  the 
laws  of  memory?  Why  do  some  people  have  better  memories 


PSYCHOLOGY  DEFINED  AND  DESCRIBED.  17 

than  others ?  Why  is  it  that  some  can  remember  names  and  can 
not  remember  faces,  while  others  can  remember  faces  and  not 
remember  names?  Why  is  it  that  some  have  a  good  memory  of 
the  eye  for  objects  once  seen,  while  they  have  no  memory  at  all 
of  the  ear — can  not  remember  sounds;  for  example,  the  com- 
monest musical  airs  ?  How  does  it  come  that  many  children  at 
a  certain  age  have  an  inherent  tendency,  amounting  almost  to  a 
mania,  for  lying?  Why  does  corporal  punishment  do  a  few  chil- 
dren good  and  injure  beyond  recall  the  mental  habits  and  mental 
{ife  of  others?  Why  is  it  that  the  child  at  three  years  will  have  no 
feelings  of  fear,  and  will  play  with  snakes,  toads  and  caterpillars, 
while  at  six  the  same  child  will  shrink  and  shudder  at  the  very 
mention  of  such  objects?  Why  is  it  that  at  certain  ages  the 
child  has  a  mania  for  making  collections  of  objects,  e.  g.,  the  boy 
collects  arrowheads,  rocks,  tobacco  tags  and  animal  pets;  and 
the  girl  collects  remnants  of  gay  ribbons,  sea  shells  and  buttons; 
while  both  pester  their  friends  in  endeavoring  to  secure  a  collec- 
tion of  foreign  postage  stamps  ?  Why  does  it  occur  that  a  child 
longs  to  do  a  thing  that  he  is  told  not  to  do,  and  is  not  particu- 
larly anxious  about  the  task  he  is  asked  to  perform?  These  are 
just  a  few  of  the  questions  that  Psychology,  in  one  of  its  depart- 
ments, must  answer. 

There  are  still  larger  questions  with  which  Psychology  has  to 
deal.  Have  animals  mind?  If  so,  is  their  mental  life  similar  to 
ours?  Do  they  reason,  judge,  compare  and  think  as  we  do? 
These  are  questions  that  appeal  for  their  solution  to  Coinpara- 
ti^e  Psychology. 

What  is  the  delirium  which  is  induced  by  fever  or  alcoholic 
drink?  What  are  dreams?  What  are  mesmerism  and  hypno- 
tism? What  is  insanity?  These  are  questions  that  belong  to 
Morbid  Psychology. 

What  is  the  relation  of  mental  power  to  the  size  of  the 
brain,  the  number  and  depth  of  its  convolutions?  How  do  the 
amount  and  quality  of  the  blood  supply  affect  the  mental  pro- 
cesses? Why  does  a  sudden  blow  on  the  head  make  us  uncon- 
scious? Why  do  drugs,  coffee,  quinine  and  chloroform  affect  the 
L.  P.— 2 


18  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

flow  of  the  mental  states  ?    These  are  indicative  of  the  questions 
with  which  Physiological  Psychology  is  concerned. 

And  then  there  are  a  large  class  of  mental  activities  of  which 
we  are  unconscious — indeed  this,  I  sometimes  think,  is  the  largest 
class.  To  illustrate  — I  am  seated  reading  an  exceedingly  inter- 
esting book.  I  cross  my  legs,  run  my  fingers  through  my  hair  or 
pull  my  handkerchief  out  of  my  pocket,  and  do  not  seem  to  know 
it,  for  if  you  should  ask  me  a  moment  later  if  I  had  done  these 
things  I  would  say  I  had  not,  since  the  activities  mentioned  had 
made  no  impression  upon  me.  And  yet  each  one  of  these  was  a 
voluntary  act.  My  legs  did  not  really  cross  themselves— /crossed 
them.  My  hand  did  not  go  to  my  head  of  itself,  nor  did  the 
handkerchief  get  from  my  pocket  to  my  nose  of  itself — /did  these 
things,  and  yet  they  were  sub-conscious  activities.  I  am  at  the 
theater  and  am  intensely  interested  in  the  play,  but  to  see  it  well 
I  am  compelled  to  sit  in  an  uncomfortable  seat— I  am  obliged  to 
peer  to  the  left  of  a  pillar  or  to  the  right  of  a  big  hat,  but  I  do 
not  feel  these  discomforts  till  the  play  is  over.  The  "  bleachers" 
of  the  average  baseball  ground  do  not  seem  to  be  hard  seats 
until  the  ninth  inning  of  the  game  closes,  when  our  interest  sub- 
sides. You  have  perhaps  noticed  the  German  Hausfrau  as  she 
knits;  it  appears  to  be  purely  a  mechanical  action,  and  the  knit- 
ter keeps  up  her  knitting  even  when  she  gossips  or  reads.  But 
you  know,  and  she  knows,  that  the  knitting  does  not  go  on  of 
itself.  Notice  how  quickly  she  observes  that  she  has  "  dropped  a 
stitch."  How  slowly  one  must  at  first  proceed  while  he  is  learning 
to  manipulate  the  typewriter.  How  the  pupil,  when  learning  to 
play  on  the  organ,  while  he  gives  attention  to  the  "  one,  two, 
three,  four"  that  he  is  counting,  forgets  to  press  the  proper  key 
or  work  the  pedals.  After  a  time  all  these  things  become  auto- 
matic, i.  e.,  they  are  done  sub-consciously.  You  or  I  may  not  be 
able  to  sleep  in  yonder  mill,  amid  the  din  and  noise  of  its  whirring 
machinery,  and  yet  the  miller  is  able  to  do  so.  But  let  one  of  the 
bearings  become  dry  and  make  the  slightest  noise,  a  noise  such 
that  you  and  I  would  pay  no  attention  to,  yet  it  will  awaken  the 
miller,  while  the  much  greater  noise  to  which  he  is  accustomed 


PSYCHOLOGY  DEFINED  AND  DESCRIBED.  19 

• 
would  not  in  the  least  disturb  or  arouse  him.    Psychology,  then, 

must  also  treat  of  all  the  sub-conscious  activities  and  endeavor 
to  explain  them. 

And  then  have  you  not  noticed  how  the  blind  man  feels  with 
the  end  of  his  cane  and  how  the  wood-carver  traces  with  the  point 
of  his  chisel,  just  as  you  or  I  feel  with  our  hands  and  fingers? 
Furthermore,  have  you  not  observed  the  professional  manner- 
isms displayed  by  men  of  different  avocations?  You  can  gen- 
erally pick  out  the  lawyer,  the  physician,  the  clergyman,  the  busi- 
ness man,  by  these  professional  mannerisms,  which  settle  upon 
one  even  before  he  is  thirty. 

And  there  is  also  the  Psychology  of  prejudice.  We  like  cer- 
tain people  better  if  they  are  Democrats  or  Republicans,  Congre- 
gationalists  or  Baptists.  A  certain  college  in  one  of  the  States 
of  the  Central  West  catered  to  the  prejudices  of  its  constituency 
when  its  officers  sought  throughout  the  country  for  a  professor 
of  mathematics  who  should  be  at  the  same  time  a  Methodist  and 
a  Democrat.  The  very  hope  of  aristocracy,  indeed  of  the  "  Four 
Hundred  "  itself,  lies  in  the  Psychology  of  prejudice.  Some  people 
will  not  fraternize  with  us  unless  we  can  boast  of  "blue  blood," 
or  are  the  burdened  possessor  of  a  "Van,"  or  some  other  Hol- 
landish  or  "outlandish"  prefix.  Suppose  that  for  some  whim- 
sical, fanciful  reason  you  have  taken  a  dislike  to  some  name,  e.g., 
Ethel,  or  Bridget,  or  Marie.  When  you  meet  a  person  bearing 
any  one  of  these  names  you  at  first,  perhaps  unconsciously,  form 
a  dislike  for  the  person  herself.  The  Bostonian  must  live  on 
Beacon  street  or  Commonwealth  avenue  if  he  wishes  to  gain  an 
entree  into  a  certain  social  "set."  The  Dartmouth  student  ran 
never  be  quite  so  friendly  with  the  man  from  Amherst  as  he  can 
with  the  man  from  Williams.  In  fact,  all  sorts  of  clannishness 
finds  its  basis  in  the  Psychology  of  prejudice. 

I  think  now  it  is  entirely  clear  that  the  scope  of  Psychology  is 
very  broad  — that  it  touches  every  branch  of  our  daily  life  and 
activity.  And  how  much  better  is  such  Psychology  than  the  nar- 
row sort  which  restricts  itself  to  the  merely  speculative  form  and 
discusses  the  faculties  and  "categories  of  thought"  in  a  hazy, 


20  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

• 

vague  sort  of  way.  But  let  us  as  students,  if  possible,  enter  this 
broad  field  before  us  without  preconceived  notions.  I  hope  we 
have  no  cherished  theories  which  we  wish  to  substantiate.  Let 
us  first  inquire  into  all  the  facts  before  framing  our  theories. 
"  First  describe,  then  explain,"  is  ever  the  true  order  of  the 
scientific  procedure.  Of  all  persons,  the  psychologist  must  have 
an  unbiased  mind.  He  must  be  thoroughly  imbued  with  the 
spirit  of  investigation  —  the  true  scientific  spirit.  But  when  once 
he  discovers  that  the  facts  support  a  certain  principle,  and  that 
that  principle  alone  is  compatible  with  the  discovered  facts,  then 
he  is  morally  bound  to  adhere  to  a  position  that  is  in  harmony 
with  this  established  principle.  The  psychologist  must  have  clear 
mental  vision,  with  no  cataract  over  the  eye  of  judgment,  and 
must  have  command  of  a  wide  range  of  thought.  I  have  in  my 
laboratory  an  instrument  invented  by  Wheatstone,  called  the 
pseud oscope,  in  which  the  mirrors  are  so  arranged  that  each  eye 
sees  the  image  which  the  other  eye  ought  to  see  and  would  see 
under  normal  conditions.  By  means  of  this  a  solid  object,  as  a 
pyramid,  will  appear  hollow— and  vice  versa.  From  propositions 
advanced  by  certain  would-be  psychologists,  who  have  ha  d  neither 
special  training  nor  possess  very  great  natural  ability,  it  would 
seem  that  some  sort  of  mental  pseudoscope  had  been  employed. 
At  the  close  of  his  investigations  the  psychologist  must  have  for 
his  conclusions  clearly  established  principles,  in  the  light  of  which 
he  may  interpret  new  experiences  as  they  arise.  When  these 
principles  are  clear-cut,  definite  and  thoroughly  established  he 
must  "  hew  to  the  line  "  and  not  vacillate  to  and  fro,  a  mere  rud- 
derless bark  moved  about  by  the  wind  of  other  men's  breath.  He 
must  settle  all  the  more  important  questions  of  Psychology  for 
himself,  on  an  independent  basis.  When  this  is  done  we  shall 
never  become  "hewers  of  wood  or  drawers  of  water"  for  any 
particular  school  of  thinkers.  With  a  clean,  well-trained  eye  and 
the  mind's  "retinal  field"  cleared  of  all  floating  specks,  the  stu- 
dent of  Psychology  must  ever  seek  for  the  truth,  and  the  truth 
alone,  if  he  would  not  be  handicapped,  for  in  this  as  in  all  other 
lines  of  investigation  —  "  the  Truth  shall  make  you  free." 


LESSON  III. 

THE    METHODS    OF    PSYCHOLOGY. 

IN  the  previous  chapters  we  were  occupied  (1)  in  indicating  the 
real  service  of  Psychology  to  the  average  teacher,  and  (2)  with 
the  query,  What  is  Psychology?  which  suggested  some  of  the 
many  questions  with  which  the  psychologist  has  to  deal,  thus 
giving  us  an  idea  of  the  province  of  Psychology  in  the  realm  of 
the  sciences.  We  must  now  allude  to  some  of  the  methods  em- 
ployed by  the  psychologists  in  order  to  learn  just  how  they  gain 
their  conclusions ;  for,  if  we  know  the  several  methods  thoroughly 
well,  we  will  be  able  to  decide  which  one  is  the  best  for  our  pur- 
pose, therefore  the  one  we  should  employ  as  teachers  in  our  own 
investigations  into  the  many  interesting  mental  phenomena  that 
present  themselves  from  day  to  day.  An  acquaintance  with  these 
methods  is  exceedingly  important.  We  can  never  take  a  scien- 
tist's conclusions  as  valid  unless  he  tells  us  how  these  conclusions 
were  reached.  W7e  must  know  his  modus  operand!  before  we  per- 
mit his  deductions  to  pass  muster.  It  is  not  sufficient  for  the 
astronomer  to  tell  us  that  he  has  discovered  a  new  star— he  must 
tell  us  just  how,  and  under  what  conditions  he  came  to  observe 
it,  and  is  obliged  to  designate  in  mathematical  terms  the  exact 
location  it  occupies  in  the  heavens.  The  histologist  may  an- 
nounce that  in  a  particular  portion  of  the  brain  he  has  observed 
certain  peculiarly  shaped  nerve  cells.  Before  this  announcement 
is  of  any  value  at  all,  he  must  submit  a  detailed  description, 
among  other  things,  of  the  way  in  which  the  brain  tissue  was 
prepared  for  examination,  stating  what  reagents  were  employed 
in  hardening  and  staining  the  specimen,  and  the  thickness  of  the 
sections  he  examined,  as  well  as  the  kind  of  microscope  and  objec- 
tive he  used  in  his  observations.  In  fact,  all  truly  scientific  work 
must  be  frank,  open  and  "  above  board."  Hypocrisy  and  decep- 

(21) 


22  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tion  are  quickly  discovered  in  the  scientific  field.    A  knowledge  of 
methods  is  necessary  before  accepting  conclusions. 

You  have  noticed  that  all  methods  of  investigation  are  becom- 
ing more  and  more  exact.  The  scientific  laboratory  is  quite  a 
modern  innovation.  There  was  a  time  when  about  all  the  appa 
ratus  needed  by  the  chemist  consisted  of  a  "spoon  and  a  bottle.7 
Even  more  recently  has  the  physical  laboratory  been  established 
with  its  essentially  large,  extensive,  and  indispensable  equipment. 
And  nearly  all  of  us  can  remember  the  time  when  such  a  thing  as 
a  general  biological  laboratory  was  but  little  thought  of  and 
comparatively  unknown,  while  special  laboratories  devoted  to 
anatomy,  physiology  and  bacteriology  were  not  considered  pos- 
sibilities, but  were  regarded  as  phantasms  of  fanciful  dreamers. 
Formerly  all  investigation  took  the  speculative  turn.  In  fact, 
they  were  not  real  bona  fide  investigations  at  all.  The  old  scho- 
lastic philosophers  were  oftentimes  busily  engaged  with  utterly 
senseless  questions,  waxing  warm,  and  hurling  anathemas  at 
each  other,  in  their  discussions  with  reference  to  the  number  of 
angels  that  could  stand  on  the  point  of  a  cambric  needle.  Yet 
these  same  men,  renowned  for  their  learning,  imprisoned  and 
martyred  others  who  sought  by  means  of  practical  experiments  to 
find  a  key  with  which  they  might  be  enabled  to  read  the  book  of 
nature.  Aristotle  was  the  son  of  a  renowned  physician,  and  yet  he 
knew  of  no  function  that  could  possibly  be  assigned  to  the  brain, 
unless  it  be  that  of  lubricating  the  eyes.  The  principle  of  lifewab 
discussed,  and  a  "vital  fluid  "  was  resorted  to  as  an  explanation, 
but  no  one  was  permitted  to  study  the  living  organism  itself. 
The  true  scientific  spirit,  wherever  it  manifested  itself  and  lifted 
up  its  voice  of  inquiry,  was  stifled,  and  the  man  who  dared  to 
experiment  within  the  world  of  nature  and  delve  into  her  secrets 
was  soon  proscribed  by  the  church  and  disowned  by  his  country- 
men (who  should  have  hailed  him  as  a  benefactor),  and  then 
ried  off  to  the  dread  inquisition  — 

"Theirs  not  to  make  reply 
Theirs  not  to  reason  why 
Theirs  but  to  do  and  die." 


THE  METHODS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  23 

But  we  have  nothing  of  the  kind  at  the  present  day.  The  sci- 
entific spirit  is  "in  the  air."  It  can  never  again  be  throttled. 
How  glad  we  are  that  science  studies  are  being  introduced  into  all 
our  schools;  even  if  it  is  coming  slowly,  the  era  is  near  at  hand 
when  every  child  will  be  brought  face  to  face  with  nature,  and  the 
purely  mechanical,  artificial  methods  of  teaching  will  be  aban- 
doned for  all  time.  You  ought  to  felicitate  yourselves  as  teachers 
that  you  live  in  this  eventful  and  auspicious  epoch  at  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  era  in  education  with  its  natural  methods— its 
kindergartens,  its  science  studies,  its  natural  history  and  travel 
readers. 

While  it  is  very  evident  that  the  methods  of  all  the  other 
sciences  have  in  these  latter  days  assumed  more  and  more  the 
character  of  exactness,  can  the  same  be  said  of  the  science  of 
Psychology?  Is  it  a  more  exact  science  than  formerly?  Are  its 
conclusions  to-day  more  trustworthy  than  the  metaphysical 
guesses  of  the  old-time  Psychology?  You  will  say  at  once  that 
you  can  easily  see  that  the  physicist  is  able  to  assiduously  pur- 
sue exact  methods  and  apply  them  to  his  subject-matter;  that 
surely  the  histologist  should  have  a  trained  eye,  a  good  memory, 
superior  powers  of  comparison  and  an  excellent  microscope; 
that  it  goes  without  question  that  the  anatomist  must  make  use 
of  the  scalpel  and  microtome ;  that  the  botanist  and  the  bacteri- 
ologist should  by  all  means  have  abundant  laboratory  facilities; 
that  the  astronomer  is  morally  bound  to  use  the  largest  availa- 
ble equipment,  but  you  seriously  question  whether  there  can  ever 
be  any  considerable  exactness  within  the  domain  of  psycho- 
logical study.  Many  people  question  this,  and  are  anxiously 
asking,  How  can  Psychology  be  brought  out  from  under  the 
clouds  of  never-ending  speculation,  and  be  placed  upon  a  solid 
ba«is,  after  the  manner  of  the  other  sciences?  Do  the  phenomena 
of  mind  admit  of  treatment  by  the  modern  inductive  scientific 
method?  Are  there  such  things  as  mental  facts,  and  can  they 
be  subjected  to  close  analysis,  well  planned  tests,  ingeniously  de- 
vised experiments  and  accurate  measurement?  These  inquiries 
are  often  made,  and  being  made  seriously,  are  therefore  entitled 


24  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

to  the  most  respectful  attention.  But  will  you  hold  these  ques- 
tions "in  solution "  for  a  moment  while  we  briefly  pass  in  review 
the  method  pr  methods  generally  employed  in  lieu  of  the  modern 
experimental  methods  of  laboratory  Psychology.  When  we  see 
the  insufficiency  of  these  methods,  in  that  there  are  many  ques- 
tions which  they  are  wholly  unable  to  solve,  then  we  will  be  better 
prepared  to  outline  the  field  and  functions  of  the  experimental 
and  more  scientific  method.  Remember  that  as  psychological 
students  we  are  seeking  to  discover  what  mind  is,  what  it  does, 
how  and  under  what  conditions  it  acts,  and  the  laws  according 
to  which  it  unfolds  and  develops. 

The  method  which  is  the  oldest  —  the  one  that  has  been  em- 
ployed (though  at  times  in  a  crude,  crass  way),  ever  since  Psy- 
chology began  to  take  form— is  that  of  introspection,  which  sig- 
nifies looking  into,  and  the  adjective,  introspective,  is  the  name 
given  to  the  methods  of  that  large  group  of  psychologists  who 
believe  all  the  questions  concerning  mind  can  be  answered  by  the 
mind  undergoing  a  sort  of  rigorous  self-examination.  The  intro- 
spective method  is  sometimes  called  the  "subjective"  method. 
This  comes  from  the  fact  that  the  mind,  as  that  which  knows, 
thinks,  feels,  wills,  and  desires,  is  called  the  "  subject "  of  the  mental 
states  in  order  to  distinguish  it  from  the  u  object,"  as  that  which 
is  known  or  felt  or  affects  the  mind  in  any  way.  The  tree  I  see, 
the  river  I  delight  in,  the  flower  I  admire,  are  objects  to  myself, 
who  am  the  subject  that  admires  them.  By  means  of  the  subjec- 
tive or  introspective  method,  we  look  within  and  take  an  inven- 
tory of  our  thoughts  and  ideas  just  as  the  merchant  takes  stock 
of  the  goods  in  his  store.  By  this  method  we  direct  our  atten- 
tion to  what  is  going  on  in  our  own  mind  at  the  time  of  its  occur- 
rence or  after  it  has  taken  place.  We  have  no  power  of  turning 
our  attention  inward  and  focusing  upon  the  mental  states  them- 
selves as  they  pass  along  the  "  stream  of  consciousness."  Some 
psychologists,  as  Sully  for  example,  say  that  we  can  attend  to  a 
certain  particular  feeling,  such  as  emulation  or  sympathy,  in 
order  to  see  what  its  nature  is,  of  what  elementary  parts  it  con- 
sists, and  how  it  is  induced.  This  is  true  only  to  a  certain  extent, 


THE  METHODS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  25 

for  the  great  difficulty  of  the  subjective  method  is  that  a  mental 
fact  vanishes  as  soon  as  you  begin  to  examine  it  introspectively. 
Suppose  you  are  at  the  theater  and  the  play  is  a  melodrama. 
There  are  touches  of  sadness  which  call  forth  deep  emotions  and 
bring  tears  to  your  eyes.  Attend  closely  to  the  feeling  with  a 
view  to  noting  its  constituent  elements  and  it  vanishes.  The  next 
time  you  are  thoroughly  angry, make  use  of  the  introspective 
method  and  focus  your  attention  "in  order  to  see  what  itsnature 
is,  and  of  what  elementary  parts  it  consists,"  and  at  once  your 
muscles  begin  to  relax,  your  teeth  are  not  set  quite  so  firmly, 
your  fist  is  no  longer  so  tightly  clenched,  and  before  you  are 
aware  of  it,  you  are  in  a  perfectly  placid  state,  with  no  emotion 
of  anger  to  analyze.  On  the  other  hand,  as  you  well  know,  a 
sensation  of  pain  when  closely  attended  to  becomes  more  intense. 
Take  it  all  in  all,  you  are  in  something  of  the  same  position  as 
the  entomologist,  who,  as  he  attempts  to  examine  a  small  living 
insect  under  the  microscope,  finds  that  it  is  always  crawling  away 
from  the  objective  and  getting  out  of  focus.  If  a  flower  that 
the  botanist  has  in  his  hand  were  to  vanish  the  moment  he  began 
to  examine  it  closely,  he  would  meet  a  difficulty  quite  analogous 
to  that  of  the  student  of  mind  using  the  introspective  method. 
In  fact,  a  psychologist  in  his  endeavor  to  "catch  up"  with  his 
mental  states  in  order  to  examine  them  more  closely,  is  like  a 
greyhound  trying  to  outrun  his  own  shadow,  for  the  mental  facts 
disappear  the  moment  he  seeks  to  examine  them  —  he  has  the 
deliverances  of  memory  as  his  only  data  ;  in  fact, "  his  introspec- 
tion becomes  retrospection."  Certain  it  is,  that  errors  of  the 
purely  introspective  method  —  and  there  are  many  bald  errors 
arising  from  the  deranging  effects  of  close,  scrutinizing  attention — 
can  only  be  remedied  by  an  appeal  to  memory.  Like  the  cerebral 
anatomist,  the  purely  introspective  psychologist  must  examine 
"  dead  tissue"  instead  of  the  living  organism,  and  as  dead  tissue 
is  widely  different  from  living  tissue,  so  a  mental  state  is  sadly 
distorted  when  viewed  in  retrospect.  Mental  states  that  are 
always  escaping  direct  examination  may  be  reproduced  in  the 
form  of  memory  images,  and  in  this  way  be  analyzed. 


26  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  deny  the  utility  and  value  of  the  intro- 
spective method,  and  yet  no  one  can  help  but  see  that,  good  as  it 
is,  it  has  many  limitations.  There  are  many  questions  in  Psy- 
chology which. are  raised  by  the  introspective  method  which  it 
cannot  answer  of  itself,  and  cannot  be  answered  but  by  appeal 
to  experiment  and  the  external  aids.  To  begin  with,  the  intro- 
spective method  inverts  the  order  of  actual  experience  and  mind 
development.  Reflection  is  not  attained  until  the  higher  mental 
powers  are  mature,  and  by  it  alone  there  can  be  no  knowledge 
gained  with  reference  to  the  rise  and  growth  of  the  intellectual 
powers  in  childhood.  Child-study,  the  most  fruitful  line  of  inves- 
tigation for  the  teacher,  can  find  no  raison  d'etre,  if  Psychology 
be  restricted  to  the  introspective  method.  And  then,  if  this  sub- 
jective method  alone  be  used,  the  science  becomes  purely  descrip- 
tive. Now,  the  fact  is,  that  science  demands  explanations,  causes 
and  sufficient  reasons  more  than  descriptions. 

How  then,  you  ask,  can  the  introspective  method  be  best  sup- 
plemented in  order  that  Psychology  may  become  more  useful  to 
the  teacher?  The  subjective  method  represents  but  a  half  truth 
and  must  be  supplemented  by  an  appeal  to  what  we  shall  desig- 
nate in  a  general  way  as  the  objective  method,  in  order  that  the 
whole  sphere  of  psychological  truth  may  be  ours.  Rather  we 
should  say  objective  methods,  for  we  mean  to  signify  by  this 
term  all  those  ways  of  studying  mental  phenomena,  aside  from 
the  scrutinizing  self-examination  which  occurs  when  we  "take 
stock"  of  the  ideas  and  thoughts  of  our  own  individual  minds. 
One  form  which  this  objective  method  takes  is  the  study  of  the 
minds  of  others  who  are  of  "like  passions  as  we  are,"  that  is,  be- 
long to  the  same  order  of  society.  In  this  we  reason  by  analogy. 
We  note  the  looks,  gestures,  bodily  posture  of  others,  and  we 
conclude  these  are  manifestations  of  feelings  similar  to  those  we 
ourselves  often  experience.  I  give  the  boy  a  new,  gaily-colored 
kite ;  his  countenance  brightens  up,  he  becomes  so  demonstrative 
that  he  can  hardly  contain  himself,  and  I  say  he  is  grateful  because 
I  acted  in  the  same  manner  under  the  same  circumstances  when 
I  was  a  boy.  After  a  few  hours  I  see  him  again.  His  face  has  a, 


THE  METHODS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  27 

woe-begone  expression,  quite  different  from  the  joyous  counte- 
nance with  which  he  left  me.  Tears  following  the  lines  of  least 
resistance,  have  made  valleys  on  his  begrimed  face,  and  as  he 
comes  sobbing  to  me  I  pity  him,  and  say  he  is  suffering  acutely 
just  as  you  or  I  suffered  when  years  ago  our  kites  landed  in  tree- 
tops  or  became  entangled  in  the  telegraph  wires.  If  at  a  public 
gathering  you  see  a  person  sitting  back  in  his  chair,  his  legs  ex- 
tended at  full  length,  his  arms  hanging  limply  at  his  side  and  his 
head  resting  against  a  convenient  pillar,  you  conclude  that  he  is 
not  so  deeply  interested  as  the  listener  who  sits  bolt  upright  in 
his  seat,  or  leans  slightly  forward  and  has  his  eyes  riveted  upon 
the  speaker.  By  means  of  such  outer  signs  as  these  we  are  en- 
abled to  determine  the  mental  states  of  others.  We  proceed  on 
the  principle  that  mind,  in  a  general  way,  is  the  same  in  all 
persons. 

If  a  certain  object  produces  in  one  the  sensation  of  red,  and 
another  object  produces  the  sensation  of  heat,  and  another  the 
sensation  of  taste,  and  still  another  arouses  the  feeling  of  in- 
tense pity,  I  argue  that  they  would  produce  similar  sensations 
in  another  person.  We  feel  warranted  in  taking  the  manifesta- 
tions of  others  at  their  "face"  value,  and  we  interpret  them  in 
the  light  of  the  facts  of  our  own  experience.  As  teachers  you  must 
do  this  continually.  Of  course,  the  minds  that  are  the  most  im- 
portant for  you  to  study  are  the  minds  of  children  under  your 
immediate  direction,  and  you  must  and  can  study  them  only  in 
light  of  your  own  experiences.  To  succeed  as  a  teacher  you  must 
know  what  is  passing  through  their  minds,  and  this  you  can 
gain  only  by  observation  of  countless  external  signs.  You  must 
notice  their  amusements  and  games,  the  kind  of  books  they 
enjoy  reading,  the  manner  in  which  they  take  punishment,  the 
studies  they  delight  in  and  those  they  detest ;  whether  their  sen- 
sations are  keen  or  obtuse,  whether  their  memories  are  good  or 
bad;  in  fact,  you  must  notice  everything  that  will  help  you  to 
know  the  nature  of  their  minds.  In  another  chapter  I  shall  out- 
line for  you  certain  tests  that  every  teacher  may  employ  in  any 
schoolroom— tests  that  will  enable  the  teacher  to  discern  the 


28  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

exact  stage  of  development  his  pupils  may  have  attained  along 
any  special  line;  for  example,  his  powers  of  observation,  memory 
and  attention.  And  as  you  interpret  the  experience  of  those 
living  minds  with  which  you  are  in  daily  contact,  you  must  also 
interpret  the  character  of  men  who  have  lived  years  agone. 
You  must  gather  all  the  facts  you  can  about  Napoleon,  from 
every  available  source,  and  thus  get  the  truest  possible  picture 
of  his  mind  and  its  activities,  before  you  are  in  the  leakt  degree 
able  to  interpret  the  historical  events  in  which  he  played  so  im- 
portant a  part.  When  I  desire  to  clearly  understand  the  rites 
and  orgies  of  the  savage  tribes  I  must,  with  the  aid  of  the  imagi- 
nation, orientate  myself  into  their  experiences  as  nearly  as  pos- 
sible in  order  to  understand  the  significance  of  these  experiences. 
Cannibalism  is  quite  inconceivable  until,  by  investigation  and  in- 
quiry, we  gain  the  point  of  view  of  the  savage  himself,  and  then 
we  discover  that  it  is  in  obedience  to  a  religious  impulse  rather 
than  a  physical  appetite,  that  he  commits  his  revolting  crime. 
From  the  standpoint  of  an  American  mother,  it  is  impossible  to 
conceive  how  the  Hindoo  woman  can  throw  her  infant  into  the 
Ganges.  To  understand  this  seemingly  cruel  action,  we  must 
know  the  mental  operations  of  the  mind  of  the  Hindoo  mother. 
Could  you  but  know  the  mental  make-up  of  Benedict  Arnold  you 
would  have  more  charity  for  him,  and  would  paint  his  traitorous 
deed  in  kindlier  colors.  We  must  as  nearly  as  possible  place  our- 
selves in  the  same  position  as  others,  both  as  to  surrounding 
conditions  and  temperament,  in  order  to  understand  the  actions 
that  have  caused  them  to  be  remembered  in  history.  When  you 
tell  your  school  children  how  the  great  and  immortal  Lincoln 
behaved  toward  soldiers  sentenced  to  be  shot,  they  say  he  was  a 
man  with  a  big  sympathetic  heart,  just  as  if  they  had  seen  him 
and  known  him  all  their  lives.  The  school  boy  enthuses  over 
William  Tell,  and  admires  his  sturdy  qualities  just  as  if  he  were 
a  real,  historical  character,  instead  of  a  fictitious  personage.  In 
exploring  an  Aztec  treasure  house  we  gain  an  idea  of  the  mental 
life  of  this  prehistoric  people  —  as  true  a  picture,  so  far  as  it  goes 
—  as  if  they  lived  and  moved  and  had  their  being  at  the  present 


THE  METHODS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  29 

time.  Thus  you  see  that  whatever  you  learn  concerning  the 
mind  of  others, you  learn  by  means  of  the  objective  method  in 
one  of  its  phases. 

Another  invaluable  form  which  the  objective  method  takes, 
gives  us  what  is  known  as  " animal"  or  "comparative"  Psy- 
chology. The  study  of  animals  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to 
the  psychologist.  The  study  of  the  mental  life  of  animals  is  as 
important  to  human  Psychology  as  the  study  of  comparative 
anatomy  is  to  human  physiology.  The  mental  states  of  animals 
are  simpler  than  those  of  man,  and  are  therefore  easier  to  treat 
than  the  more  complex  processes  of  our  adult  mental  life.  Many 
forms  of  memory,  for  example,  are  in  certain  animals  much  better 
developed  than  in  man.  We  also  have  some  few  emotional  ex- 
periences in  common,  such  as  fear  arid  the  like.  You  are  in  a  car- 
riage driving  a  lazy  horse  and  take  the  whip  from  the  socket;  he 
hears  you  do  so  and  starts  on  at  a  lively  gait.  Is  the  mental 
process  in  this  case  unlike  that  which  goes  on  in  the  min'd  of  a 
boy  who  is  doing  some  overt  act  sub  rosa,  oblivious  of  having 
been  discovered  by  the  teacher,  until  he  hears  her  reach  for  the 
ferule,  when,  quick  as  a  flash, he  straightens  up,  his  face  assuming 
a  serious  and  studious  air  as  he  becomes  deeply  engrossed  in  his 
studies  for  the  time  being? 

I  remember,  when  yet  a  boy,  of  strolling  one  morning  along 
the  banks  of  White  River  at  Indianapolis.  Soon  I  noticed  that  a 
blind  horse  had  wandered  into  the  river,  and,  getting  beyond  his 
depth,  was  in  danger  of  drowning,  for  he  could  not  tell  in  which 
direction  the  shore  lay.  Men  planning  to  save  him  were  seeking 
for  boats  and  a  rope  with  which  to  go  to  his  rescue.  At  this 
juncture  a  saddle  horse  which  had  been  left  standing  in  front  of 
a  store  near  the  bank,  having  heard  the  piteous  sounds  of  the 
blind  horse,  galloped  to  the  water's  edge,  and  then  swam  to  the 
bewildered  and  struggling  animal,  taking  hold  of  the  nmne  with 
his  teeth,  led  the  sinking  horse  to  the  opposite  bank  where  it  was 
easier  to  land  than  at  the  one  whence  he  had  come.  This  seems 
to  me  a  mental  process  very  akin  to  reasoning  in  man. 

The  mental  states  of  animals  are  more  naive  and  not  so  inter- 


30  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

related  and  complex  as  our  own,  and  can  therefore  be  traced  to 
their  origin  and  sources  much  better  and  more  readily  than  is 
possible  with  our  own  activities. 

But  even  more  important  than  animal  Psychology  is  the  study 
of  infants.  The  significance  of  the  important  facts  gained  by  the 
study  of  mind  in  its  earliest  stages  has  already  been  insisted  upon. 
By  means  of  infant  Psychology,  mental  facts  are  reached  as  far 
as  they  ever  can  be,  in  their  simplest,  most  primitive  and  original 
form.  You  must  know  what  the  mind  is  before  you  can  know 
what  it  becomes.  You  must  know  its  actualities  before  you  can 
know  its  possibilities.  The  growing  child  is  continually  giving  us 
object  lessons  in  the  development  of  mind.  And  do  you  not 
know  that  every  great  educational  reform  has  been  the  direct 
result  of  close  personal  relations  with  .children  and  youth,  and 
more  thoroughgoing  insight  into  their  needs,  experiences  and 
modes  of  thought  and  feeling?  The  greatest  teachers  of  the 
world  have  actually  lived  with  their  child  pupils,  and  studied 
them  continually.  Froebel  recommended  that  when  a  child  was 
born,  each  parent  should  open  a  life-book  in  which  should  be  re- 
corded the  stages  of  its  physical  and  mental  growth,  good  and 
bad  influences  and  qualities;  all  striking  incidents,  experiences 
and  peculiarities;  and  their  own  endeavors  and  motives  in  rear  ing 
the  child.  This  book  should  be  kept  without  the  child's  knowl- 
edge, to  be  given  him  at  maturity  as  a  guide  to  aid  hirn  in  his 
choice  of  a  profession  or  calling. 

A  sound  knowledge  of  the  early  manifestations  of  mind  is  a 
necessary  prerequisite  for  the  scientific  explanation  and  interpre- 
tation of  later  mental  development.  In  the  matter  of  child 
study  the  psychologist  is  dependent  upon  the  special  educators 
of  the  young,  both  teachers  and  parents,  and  from  them  he  does 
receive  much  valuable  aid.  There  is  much  that  can  be  done  by 
parents  in  the  way  of  recording  the  course  of  development  of  indi- 
vidual children.  The  work  already  done  in  this  line  by  Dr.  Preyer 
and  M.  Perez  with  reference  to  the  first  three  years  of  childhood, is 
stimulating  and  suggestive.  Every  school-teacher,  to  be  worthy 
of  his  place,  should  be  eager  to  compile  statistics,  especially  with 


THE  METHODS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  31 

reference  to  the  times  at  which  certain  faculties  manifest  them- 
selves. In  so  doing  he  would  magnify  his  office  in  the  best  sense, 
for  he  would  place  every  psychologist  under  obligation  to  him, 
because  of  the  valuable  fund  of  facts  supplied.  Whatever  you 
may  think  of  this,  certain  it  is  that  there  never  has  been  a  period 
when  careful,  painstaking  study  of  the  nature  of  children  was  so 
much  needed  as  now,  and  nowhere  so  much  as  in  our  own  coun- 
try. Small  beginnings,  however,  have  already  been  made,  and 
scientific  child  study  is  making  most  hopeful  progress. 

The  most  important  development  of  the  objective  method 
of  psychological  investigation  finds  its  expression  in  what  is 
usually  called  "laboratory"  or  "experimental"  Psychology.  I 
shall  not  stop  at  this  juncture  to  argue  with  reference  to  the 
necessity  of  well-selected  apparatus  to  the  psychologist.  I  will 
state,  however,  that  there  are  some  of  the  most  weighty  ques- 
tions of  Psychology  which  were  thrown  overboard  by  the  intro- 
spective school  as  unanswerable,  that  have  been  answered  by 
experimental  Psychology  alone.  And  this  is  a  most  remarkable 
fact  when  you  recall  that  twenty  years  ago  there  was  no  such 
thing  as  a  psychological  laboratory.  Until  very  recently,  the  psy- 
chologist was  compelled  to  gain  his  material  and  especially  the 
leading  facts  concerning  sensation,  from  among  the  crumbs  that 
fell  from  the  tables  of  neurology  and  physiology.  The  first  labora- 
tory was  founded  at  Leipzig  in  1878,  by  William  Wundt.  From  this 
little  workshop  went  forth  an  influence  that  has  been  gaining  in 
strength  and  volume  each  succeeding  year.  The  leading  German 
universities  all  have  psychological  laboratories  more  or  less 
pretentious,  the  best  being  at  Leipzig,  Freiburg,  Gottingen  and 
Bonn,  while  Heidelberg,  Berlin  and  Munich  have  made  excellent 
beginnings.  There  are  also  good  laboratories  at  Prague,  Rome, 
Geneva,  Copenhagen,  Paris  and  Groningen.  In  this  country  the 
first  beginnings  were  made  in  1885  by  G.  Stanley  Hall  and  Dr. 
Cattell,  at  Johns  Hopkins  University.  The  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania soon  followed  suit.  We  now  have  at  this  writing  six- 
teen laboratories  in  this  country  with  an  equipment  of  apparatus 
valued  at  |40,000,  which  is  devoted  entirely  to  psychological 


32  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  TN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

investigations.  Harvard  has  the  one  largest  and  best  equipped, 
with  Clark  University  a  close  second.  Yale  has  just  begun  its 
work  in  this  line  and  Columbia  is  among  the  very  best  in  this  as 
she  is  in  other'fields  of  investigation.  Cornell  has  a  largeendow- 
ment  for  this  especial  purpose  and  a  magnificent  equipment  of 
apparatus.  The  University  of  Indiana,  has  excellent  facilities 
and  offers  good  courses  in  this  line.  Likewise  Wisconsin  and 
Chicago  Universities.  The  movement  has  gained  a  good  foothold 
in  the  State  University  of  Iowa  and  also  that  of  Nebraska. 
Brown  University  has  a  model  laboratory,  and  Stanford  Univer- 
sity is  making  some  excellent  beginnings  in  this  direction. 
The  Catholic  University  at  Washington  has  shown  an  admir- 
able spirit  of  progression  in  providing  so  liberally  for  such 
a  laboratory.  The  University  of  Illinois,  located  at  Champaign, 
has  also  a  special  laboratory  for  psychological  investigations, 
which  is  devoted  particularly  to  the  study  of  those  departments 
of  child  study  that  will  furnish  results  of  the  greatest  value  to 
the  common  school-teacher.  These  things  are  mentioned  merely 
to  show  that  the  exact  methods  of  the  laboratory  as  applied  to 
Psychology  have  gained  a  strong  foothold  in  the  institutions  of 
our  great  American  commonwealth.  We  hope  it  may  prove  a 
mustard  seed  of  inextinguishable  vitality. 

But  what  are  some  of  the  problems  that  this  department  of 
Psychology  has  to  solve?  These  problems  can,  I  think,  be  best 
indicated  by  an  allusion  to  the  different  groups  of  apparatus 
employed : 

I.  Apparatus  used  to  represent  the  brain,  nerves  and  organs  of 
sense  (such  as  the  eye,  ear,  tactile  corpuscles  and  taste  bulbs), 
illustrating  the  intimate  connection  between  mind  and  body,  as 
well  as  the  physical  basis  of  the  psychical  activities. 

II.  Apparatus  used  to  investigate  the  Psychology  of  the  senses. 
This  is  the  largest  group,  but  the  apparatus  is  comparatively  in- 
expensive.    Color  mixers  of  various  types,  prisms,  apparatus  for 
after  images  and  color  blindness  (used  in  testing  accuracy  of 
color  perception),  as  well  as  a  dark  room,  are  needed  for  experi- 
menting upon  the  visual  sense.    Also  a  full  equipment  for  experi- 


THE  METHODS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  33 

ments  upon  the  senses  of  hearing,  temperature,  touch,  taste, 
smell,  rotation,  effort,  etc.,  is  essential. 

III.  An  expensive  but  absolutely  indispensable  collection  of  in- 
struments used  in  the  time  measurement  of  mental  processes, 
from  the  very  simplest  psychical  acts  to  the  more  complicated 
forms  of  comparison  and  association.    These  useful  instruments 
serve  a  function  to  the  psychologist  similar  to  that  supplied  to 
the  anatomist    by  the  micrometer  eye-piece.    He  measures  the 
thousandth  part  of   a   millimeter  —  the  psychologist   with  his 
chronoscope  measures  the  ten  thousandth  part  of  a  second . 

IV.  A  complicated  group  of  apparatus  for  the  investigation  of 
the  higher  mental  processes,  such  as  attention,  memory,  percep- 
tion of  time,  position  and  distance. 

V.  There  must  also  be  a  set  of  devices  for  the  purpose  of  in- 
vestigating the  nature  and  content  of  the  child's  mind  at  the 
various  stages  of  its  development.    This  gives  an  indication  of 
the  immense  service   experimental   Psychology   can  render  to 
pedagogy.    Experimental  Psychology  has  justified  itself  in  offer- 
ing a  sure  and  exact  method  of  investigation  into  the  child's 
mind  with  a,  view  to  ascertaining  the  best  path  of  development 
rather  than  longer  traveling  along  the  hard-beaten  roads  of 
traditional  educational  customs.    If  the  teacher  will  but  make 
use  of  the  facts  and  conclusions  of  the  never-failing  "new"  Psy- 
chology, he  will  be  enabled  to  give  the  world,  for  each  pupil  sent 
to  his  school,  a  rounded  out,  well  developed  citizen  — one  in  whom 
"the  length,  breadth  and  height  thereof  are  equal." 

I  have  but  meagerly  indicated  the  methods  and  functions  of 
the  various  objective  forms  which  Psychology  must  take  in 
order  to  successfully  deal  with  the  facts  of  mental  life.* 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  old  introspective  method  when  used 
alone  is  unsatisfactory,  because  it  leads  Psychology  to  become 
more  and  more  speculative,  impractical  and  visionary.  As  sim- 
ple observation  cannot  suffice  for  the  science  of  physics,  it  can- 
not possibly  suffice  for  the  science  of  Psychology.  Observations 


*For  an  excellent  and  most  valuable  detailed  statement,  see  A  LABORATORY 
COURSE  IN  PSYCHOLOGY,  by  Prof.  E.  C.  Sanford. 
L.  P.— 3 


34  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

in  Psychology,  as  in  other  sciences,  must  be  confirmed  and  modi' 
fied  by  experiment.  Psychology  must  be  treated  as  a  natural 
science.  The  old  speculative  Psychology  has  been  abandoned  by 
those  whose  methods  of  thought  are  scientific,  and  empirical 
Psychology  has  taken  its  place.  And  this  is  the  correct  thing,  for 
Psychology  is  really  a  science  of  fact  and  its  questions  are  ques- 
tions of  fact,  and  the  psychologist  must  treat  theories  and  hypo- 
theses as  rigorously  and  with  the  same  impartial  criticism  as  is 
demanded  in  other  departments  of  research.  The  old  Psychology 
in  its  speculative  form  was  incomplete  and  failed  because  it  ig- 
nored the  body.  The  new  Psychology  cannot  afford  to  ignore 
the  subject  of  mental  states.  But  Psychology  which  is  purely 
introspective  in  its  nature  must  ever  be  sterile;  and  no  wonder  is 
it  that,  in  some  quarters,  Psychology  has  borne  the  reputation 
of  being  the  driest  and  least  interesting  of  all  the  sciences.  Fur- 
thermore, it  is  certainly  true  that  exclusive  attention  to  the 
contents  of  our  own  individual  minds  can  never  give  us  a  general 
knowledge  of  mind.  In  order  to  relieve  our  methods  of  these, 
defects  we  must  at  every  stage  of  inquiry  compare  our  own 
thoughts,  ideas  and  feelings  with  those  of  other  minds,  even  if  it 
should  result  in  the  removal  of  some  of  those  "ancient  land- 
marks which  our  fathers  have  set."  The  true  Psychology  wilf 
ignore  neither  the  facts  gained  by  introspection  nor  those  sup- 
plied by  the  objective  method,  but  gathers  from  every  possible 
source  the  established  facts  of  mind.  When  you  study  physical 
science  you  observe  physical  phenomena  and  work  up  by  careful 
methods  of  procedure  to  physical  laws;  so  in  your  study  of  the 
science  of  mind  you  must  begin  with  the  simplest  mental  facts 
and  work  up  to  the  general  laws  of  mind .  Psychology,  therefore, 
is  under  obligation  to  study  every  sort  of  mental  activity  by  the 
inductive  process,  and  then  submit  these  discovered  facts  of  the 
conscious  life  to  rigorous  and  systematic  treatment.  As  the  out- 
come of  this  painstaking  research  we  will  be  able  to  see  clearly 
that  the  mind  is  a  real  unit  being,  non-material  in  its  nature,  un 
folding  and  developing  according  to  certain  laws  of  its  own. 


LESSON  IV. 

THE  CONNECTION  BETWEEN  BODY  AND  MIND. 

FROM  the  very  earliest  times  it  has  been  recognized  that  an 
intimate  interrelation  obtains  between  mind  and  body.  Alcohol 
in  some  of  its  forms,  tobacco,  coffee,  opium,  and  many  other 
drugs  have  been  used  for  ages  for  their  supposed  mental  effects. 
These  vague  notions  have  been  borne  out  by  numberless  scien- 
tific investigations  of  the  past  few  years.  These  scientific  obser- 
vations are  rendering  more  precise  and  extending  the  application 
of  what  has  always  been  known  in  the  commonest  experiences  of 
man.  It  is  an  indisputable  fact  that  mind  and  body  are  closely 
related,  and  that  each  modifies  the  activities  of  the  other.  It  is 
a  dictum  of  psychological  science  that  mental  facts  can  never  be 
properly  studied  apart  from  the  bodily  conditions  and  physical 
environment  amid  which  they  take  place.  On  the  other  hand, 
all  mental  states  are  followed  by  bodily  activity  of  some  sort. 
Thus,  you  see,  the  relation  between  mind  and  body  is  a  recipro- 
cal one— mind  affects  body  and  body  influences  mind.  I  do  not 
wish  you  to  take  this  statement  "  on  faith  "  at  all;  on  the  other 
hand,  I  very  much  prefer  that  you  draw  your  own  inferences  after 
a  survey  of  the  following  facts. 

You  well  know  that  if  the  amount  of  the  blood  supply  is  in 
any  way  interfered  with,  modifications  of  the  mental  processes 
are  certain  to  take  place.  Notice,  for  example,  the  sudden  rush- 
ing of  blood  to  the  head.  In  such  a  condition  total  unconscious- 
ness frequently  results.  And  then  strong  coffee  will  keep  some 
people  awake  because  its  stimulating  qualities  cause  the  blood 
to  circulate  more  freely  over  the  brain,  and  increased  mental 
activity  results,  which  is  too  intense  to  be  inhibited  in  order  that 
sleep  may  ensue.  Of  the  greatest  importance,  then,  is  the  quality 
of  the  blood  supply.  The  quality  of  the  blood  may  be  impure 

(35) 


36  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

from  some  error  in  the  processes  of  digestion,  assimilation  or 
excretion.  To  take  the  common  instance  of  dyspepsia  or  even 
ordinary  indigestion,  we  find  that  such  disorders  are  invariably 
followed  by  melancholia  or  at  least  by  a  bad  temper.  The  pres- 
ence of  bile  in  the  blood  even  in  healthy,  strong  individuals  gives 
rise  to  gloomy  forebodings  and  a  feeling  of  "blueness."  The 
presence  of  uric  acid  in  the  blood  of  a  gouty  patient  causes  an 
irritability  of  temper  which  at  times  is  so  severe  as  to  make 
him  for  the  time  being  a  maniac.  Knowing,  as  we  do,  the  effect 
of  certain  drugs,  such  as  chloroform  producing  anesthesia, 
nitrous  oxide  gas  producing  laughter  and  alcohol  causing  hilar- 
ity and  excitement,  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  the  mental  pro- 
cesses are  affected  by  changes  in  the  quality  of  the  blood  from 
which  the  brain  receives  its  nutrition.  And  then,  consider  the 
delirium  of  fevers.  The  poisons  present  in  the  blood  in  febrile 
diseases  gives  rise  to  confusion  of  the  mental  states.  The  deli- 
rium which  is  present  in  typhoid  fever  is  different  from  the  de- 
lirium which  is  manifested  in  rheumatic  fever.  The  insanity 
which  results  from  influenza,  or  "la  grippe,"  is  very  different 
from  other  post-febrile  insanities.  The  child,  and,  for  that  mat- 
ter, you  yourself  can  think  better  if  the  head  is  rested  upon  the 
hand  or  the  forehead  rubbed  with  the  fingers.  The  posture  of 
the  body  plays  an  exceedingly  important  function  in  its  relation 
to  the  mental  processes.  You  cannot  imagine  an  angry  man 
with  his  arms  hanging  loosely  at  his  side,  with  his  fingers  spread 
apart,  and  his  muscles  relaxed.  No,  indeed;  the  angry  man 
stiffens  every  muscle,  clenches  his  fist  and  sets  his  teeth  firmly.  A 
person  can  never  conduct  an  argument  when  languidly  sitting  in 
a  chair ;  he  must  lean  forward  or  stand  up  and  throw  his  arms 
about,  or  indulge  in  other  gestures  equally  emphatic. 

And  in  this  same  connection,  I  am  reminded  to  speak  of  the 
effect  of  tobacco  upon  the  mental  processes.  Of  course  these  dis- 
turbances are  much  more  pronounced  in  the  case  of  the  young 
growing  person  than  in  that  of  the  confirmed  smoker.  It  is  not 
within  my  province  to  speak  of  the  physiological  disturbances 
due  to  the  two  poisons,  nicotine  and  pyridine,  which  tobacco 


CONNECTION  BETWEEN  BODY  AND  MIND.  37 

always  contains.  I  shall  not  speak  of  the  especial  diseases  of 
smokers,  nor  of  the  particular  disorders  which  afflict  the  laborers 
in  tobacco  manufactories.  I  only  desire,  in  passing,  to  refer  to 
the  mental  disorders  which  result  from  the  use  of  tobacco,  es- 
pecially on  the  part  of  the  young,  such  as  hallucinations  of 
vision,  anxiety,  loss  of  memory  and  general  mental  depression. 
You  will  find  an  interesting  commentary  on  this  point  by  refer- 
ring to  the  investigations  made  a  couple  of  years  ago  upon  the 
students  of  Yale  College,  where  it  was  found  to  be  true  beyond  a 
possibility  of  contradiction  that  "  tobacco  inhibits  the  physical 
growth,  and  causes  a  loss  of  mental  power  in  those  addicted  to 
its  use."  The  vigorous  action  that  college  students  themselves 
have  taken  in  this  matter  is  more  potent  for  good  results  than 
anything  that  any  "  old  fogy  "  outsider  could  say  or  do.  I  refer 
to  the  well-known  fact  that  no  body  of  college  students  will  give 
a  place  on  any  of  the  athletic  teams,  be  it  the  foot-ball  eleven, 
the  base  ball  nine,  the  boat  crew,  or  in  track  athletics,  to  a  man 
who  uses  tobacco  in  any  form.  And  as  any  observer  of  college 
sports  will  tell  you,  this  is  not  because  it  injures  muscle  alone. 
Men  whose  only  recommendation  is  their  muscle  are  not  the 
ones  who  gain  a  place  on  the  athletic  teams,  for  it  is  very  evi- 
dent that  the  "heady"  player  is  the  one  most  in  demand,  and 
college  games  are  won  by  "gray  matter"  rather  than  beefy 
tissue;  by  means  of  brain  rather  than  brawn. 

Attention  ought  also  be  called  to  the  connection  of  the  bodily 
condition  with  the  phenomena  of  memory.  Ribot  and  others 
have  shown  that  in  a  general  way  reproduction  of  impressions 
seems  to  depend  upon  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  especially  in 
the  brain.  Related  to  this  is  the  familiar  fact  that  bodily  injury 
will  disturb  the  memory,  as  the  case  reported  by  Dr.  Winslow  so 
well  illustrates :  "A  clergyman  of  rare  talent  and  energy,  of  sound 
education,  was  thrown  from  his  carriage  and  received  a  violent 
concussion  of  the  brain.  For  several  days  he  remained  utterly  un- 
conscious, and  when  restored  his  intellect  was  observed  to  be  in  a 
state  similar  to  that  of  a  naturally  intelligent  child.  Although 
in  middle  life,  he  re-commenced  his  English  and  classical  studies 


38  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

under  tutors,  and  was  progressing  satisfactorily,  when,  after 
several  months  successful  study,  his  memory  gradually  returned, 
and  his  mind  resumed  all  its  wonted  vigor  and  its  former  wealth 
and  polish  of  culture." 

Actual  experiments  with  reference  to  the  influence  of  drugs, 
stimulants  and  narcotics  upon  the  psychical  processes  have  been 
undertaken,  and  with  some  interesting  facts  well  established  as  a 
result.  During  the  fall  of  1891, 1  was  located  at  Freiburg,  Ger- 
many, where  Professor  Miinsterberg's  excellent  laboratory  was 
then  in  operation.  While  there  I  took  part  in  some  interesting 
experiments  in  this  very  line.  The  description  of  these  experi- 
ments with  their  results  has  recently  been  published  in  Germany ; 
but  I  shall  give  you  in  brief  outline  an  account  of  the  methods 
employed  and  the  facts  gained  as  conclusions.  As  stated  above, 
these  experiments  were  for  the  purpose  of  determining  the  influ- 
ence of  certain  materials  upon  the  psychical  processes.  Three 
groups  of  substances  were  used.  In  the  first  group  tea,  coffee 
and  alcohol  in  various  forms  (beer,  Rhine  wine,  Bordeaux  red 
wine  and  brandy)  are  included ;  while  the  second  embraces  opium 
and  sodium  bromide;  and  the  third  quinine,  anti-pyrine  and 
phenacetine.  Medium  doses  only  were  given  so  that  no  possible 
danger  could  ensue.  The  various  psychical  processes  upon  which 
the  effects  of  these  different  substances  were  tried,  were  four  in  num- 
ber (1)  the  memory  of  certain  figures,  letters  and  sounds  (similar 
to  the  test  I  outline  in  my  chapter  on  memory) ;  (2)  the  simple 
addition  of  numbers;  (3)  the  naming  of  colors;  (4)  the  count- 
ing of  letters  on  a  printed  page.  The  effect  of  the  different  nerv- 
ines was  tested  at  regular  intervals  for  two  hours  after  partak- 
ing of  them.  I  will  first  take  up  the  simplest  of  the  experiments, 
viz.,  the  counting  of  letters  on  a  printed  page.  The  problem  was 
merely  to  count  the  greatest  number  possible  in  a  given  time — 
two  minutes.  I  shall  designate  the  four  persons  taking  part  in 
the  experiment  as  A,  B,  C,  and  D.  The  experiments  were  tried 
at  three  different  intervals  (one-quarter  of  an  hour,  one  hour, 
and  two  hours)  after  partaking  of  the  alcohol,  drugs,  etc.  The 
results  are  shown  more  clearly  in  the  following  tables;  the  sign+, 


CONNECTION  BETWEEN  BODY  AND  MIND. 


39 


before  a  number  means  that  so  many  letters  more,  and  the  sign 
— ,  that  so  many  letters  less  could  be  counted  under  the  different 
influences,  in  two  minutes,  than  in  the  normal  condition — i.  e., 
without  having  partaken  of  the  various  nervines. 

Table  showing  number  of  printed  letters,  more  or  less,  that 
could  be  counted  in  two  minutes,  after  partaking  of  liquors  in- 
dicated : 


Person. 

Agent. 

%  hour  after 
partaking. 

1  hour  after 
partaking. 

2  hours  after 
partaking. 

A 

Normal  record 
406  letters. 

B 

Normal  record 
390  letters. 

C 

Normal  record 
472  letters. 

D 

Normal  record 
454  letters. 

(Beer 

—74 
—67 
—40 

—  8 

—60 

+  5 
—  8 

4-2 

—45 
—21 
—70 
—  4 

—22 

—56 
—24 
—  2 

—23 
—47 

—12 

+20 

—  2 

•+36 

+20 
+26 

—30 
—11 
—23 
0 

4-20 

+12 
+  2 

+36 

—20 

+14 
+52 

+51 
+53 
+36 
+26 

+  3 
—11 

—27 
+24 

+48 
+26 
+14 
+15 

I  Brandy 

1  Rhine  wine  ..  . 
iBordeaux  

(Beer  
1  Brandy         .  .  . 

1  Rhine  wine  ..  . 
iBordeaux  

{Beer  
Brandy 

Rhine  wine  ..  . 
Bordeaux  

{Beer  
Brandy  
Rhine  wine  ..  . 
Bordeaux  .... 

The  effect  of  tea  in  this  experiment  (counting  printed  letters) 
is  quite  remarkable.  These  are,  of  course,  to  be  compared  with 
the  normal  records  given  in  the  preceding  table : 


Persons. 

%  hour  after. 

1  hour  after. 

2  hours  after. 

A 

+  4 

-27 

r-  32 

B 

—16 

-71 

-100 

O 

0 

-22 

-  43 

D 

+12 

-20 

-  15 

40 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


Coffee  has  a  similar  effect  in  assisting  this  simple  mental  pro- 
cess, but  the  accelerating  influence  is  not  nearly  so  pronounced 
as  in  the  case  of  tea. 

The  effect  ^of  drugs  is  clearly  shown  in  the  following  table.  As 
in  the  other  tables,  +  or  —  signs  indicate  the  number  of  letters 
more  or  less  than  the  normal  record  that  the  person  could  count 
in  two  minutes  after  having  partaken  of  the  drugs : 


Person. 

Drugs. 

%  hour  after 
partaking. 

1  hour  after 
partaking. 

2  hours  after 
partaking. 

A 

Normal  record 
406  letters. 

(  Antipyrine.  .  . 
•<  Quinine  
(  Phenacetine  . 

—20 
—36 

+40 

—17 
—27 
+62 

—32 

+21 
+60 

B 

Normal  record 
390  letters. 

(  Antipyrine.  .  . 
•j  Quinine  
(  Phenacetine  . 

—16 
—12 
—  5 

—29 

+15 
+20 

—24 

+35 
+27 

O 

Normal  record 
472  letters. 

{Antipyrine.  .  . 
Quinine  
Phenacetine  . 

—38 
—40 

+  6 

—45 

—30 

+  6 

—35 

2 
+14 

D 

Normal  record 
454  letters. 

!  Antipyrine.  .  . 
Quinine  
Phenacetine  . 

—80 
—25 

+  7 

—72 
0 

+  3 

-56 

+  8 

+12 

You  can  readily  see  that  the  most  harmful  of  the  three  is  anti- 
pyrine,  and  that  phenacetine  is  by  long  odds  the  most  beneficial. 
The  depression  of  the  psychical  processes  after  taking  antipyrine 
was  so  constant  that  one  is  tempted  to  give  warning  against 
the  use  of  such  a  remedy  (?)  whose  disturbing  effects  are  so  far- 
reaching  and  thoroughgoing.  Similar  effects  follow  upon  par- 
taking of  even  small  doses  of  opium  and  sodium  bromide. 

I  shall  refer  to  only  one  other  set  of  experiments  that  go  to 
show  the  influence  of  these  nervines  upon  the  mental  processes. 
This  is  in  simple  addition  where  there  was  a  single  column  of  ten 
figures  (1  and  0  being  left  out)  to  be  added,  and  the  time  occu- 
pied was  measured  in  hundredths  of  a  second.  The  folio  wing 
table  will,  I  am  sure,  explain  itself: 


CONNECTION  BETWEEN  BODY  AND  MIND. 


41 


Person. 

Agent. 

Number 
of  T&T  seconds 
longer  or  shorter 
%  hour  after. 

Number 
of  ita  seconds 
longer  or  shorter 
1  hour  after. 

A 

Normal  record 

{Beer  
Cognac  
White  wine 

—0.30 
—1.49 
—0  10 

—0.53 

—1.87 
—0  14 

6.02  sec. 

Red  wine  
f  Beer 

—0.12 
40  92 

—0.68 
-|-1  10 

B 

1  Cognac            

+0  42 

+2  34 

Normal  record 

|  White  wine 

+0  62 

4-0  87 

7  .  56  sec. 

vRed  wine  
fBeer 

+0.73 
—0  21 

4-0.48 
—0  66 

O 

Normal  record 
5.26  sec. 

1  Cognac  
1  White  wine   
iRed  wine  

{Beer  

—0.09 
—0.15 
—0.19 

'4-0  91 

-f  0  25 
—0.83 
—0.29 

+0  42 

D 

Cognac    

--0  15 

--1  02 

Normal  record 

White  wine         .... 

--0  53 

4-0  42 

6  .  72  sec. 

Red  wine  

—0.81 

--0.65 

You  will  readily  see  that  almost  without  exception  A  and  C 
could  add  the  single  column  of  ten  figures  more  quickly,  while  B 
and  D  had  to  take  a  longer  time  for  the  same  work,  after  partak- 
ing of  these  alcoholic  beverages.  Both  tea  and  coffee  were  found 
to  be  great  aids  to  mental  quickness  in  performing  this  simple 
arithmetical  process.  I  have  given  you  so  many  of  these  tabu- 
lated results  because  I  am  anxious  that  you  see  for  yourself  that 
the  mental  processes  are  always  modified  by  the  use  of  the  com- 
mon nervines  —  either  helped  or  hindered,  either  accelerated  or 
retarded.  If  these  exceedingly  simple  mental  activities  are  so 
perceptibly  affected  by  these  various  agents,  what  great  changes 
can  be  wrought  by  therein  the  more  complex  mental  activities  of 
comparison,  association,  reflection  and  reasoning. 

But  you  will  perhaps  say  "I  readily  concede  that  the  bodily 
condition  may  affect  the  mind,  but  you  have  as  yet  given  no  evi- 
dence that  the  mind  in  any  way  influences  and  modifies  the  bod- 
ily conditions."  Well,  then,  let  us  observe  the  following.  I  told 


42  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

you  in  one  place  that  indigestion  and  dyspepsia  will  cause  irrita- 
bility of  temper  and  melancholia.  It  is  just  as  true  that  melan- 
cholia will  cause  loss  of  appetite  and  indigestion.  The  person 
who  is  deeply  grieving  cannot  eat,  try  he  ever  so  hard.  Notice 
also  the  outburst  of  tears  or  the  "lump  in  the  throat"  caused 
by  intense  grief  or  sorrow.  Mental  excitement  or  anxiety  affect 
the  heart  beats  and  the  circulation  of  the  blood.  A  violent  emo- 
tion inhibits  the  circulation  and  so  causes  fainting.  Great  dread 
may  prevent  the  secretion  of  saliva,  a  circumstance  which  lay  at 
the  basis  of  the  old-time  "  ordeal  of  God"  in  which  the  accused 
person  would  be  held  guilty  if  he  could  hold  rice  in  his  mouth 
without  wetting  it.  Fear  will  make  one's  hair  stand  on  end.  I 
know  of  no  better  statement  of  the  bodily  changes  induced  by  fear 
than  that  of  Darwin,  which  I  quote  at  considerable  length,  because 
it  so  well  illustrates  the  general  points  under  discussion.  "In 
fear,  the  eyes  and  mouth  are  widely  opened  and  the  eyebrows 
raised.  The  frightened  man  at  first  stands  like  a  statue,  motion- 
less and  breathless,  or  crouches  down  as  if  instinctively  to  escape 
observation.  The  heart  beats  quickly  and  violently  so  that  it 
palpitates  or  knocks  against  the  ribs;  but  it  is  very  doubtful  if  it 
then  acts  m  ore  efficiently  than  usual,  so  as  to  send  a  greater  supply 
of  blood  to  all  parts  of  the  body,  for  the  skin  instantly  becomes 
pale  as  during  incipient  faintness.  That  the  skin  is  much  affected 
under  the  sense  of  great  fear  is  shown  in  the  marvelous  manner 
in  which  perspiration  exudes  from  it.  This  exudation  is  all  the 
more  remarkable  as  the  surface  is  then  cold,  and  hence  the  term 
*a  cold  sweat.'  The  hairs  on  the  skin  also  stand  erect  and  the 
superficial  muscles  shiver.  In  connection  with  the  disturbed  ac- 
tion of  the  heart  the  breathing  is  hurried.  The  salivary  glands 
act  imperfectly,  the  mouth  becomes  dry  and  is  often  opened  and 
shut.  I  have  also  noticed  that  under  slight  fear  there  is  a  strong 
tendency  to  yawn.  One  of  the  best  marked  symptoms  is  the 
trembling  of  all  the  muscles  of  the  body,  and  this  is  often  first 
seen  in  the  lips.  From  this  cause  and  from  the  dryness  of  the 
mouth,  the  voice  becomes  husky  and  indistinct  and  may  alto- 
gether fail.  As  fear  increases  into  an  agony  of  terror,  we  behold, 


CONNECTION  BETWEEN  BODY  AND  MIND.  43 

as  under  all  violent  emotions,  diversified  results.  The  heart 
beats  wildly,  or  fails  to  act  and  faintness  ensues;  there  is  a 
death-like  pallor,  the  breathing  is  labored,  the  wings  of  the  nos- 
trils are  widely  dilated,  there  is  a  gasping  and  convulsive  motion 
of  the  lips,  a  tremor  on  the  hollow  cheek,  a  gulping  and  catching 
of  the  throat,  the  uncovered  and  protruding  eyeballs  are  fixed 
on  the  object  of  terror,  or  they  may  roll  restlessly  from  side  to 
side.  The  pupils  are  said  to  be  enormously  dilated.  All  the  mus- 
cles of  the  body  may  become  rigid  or  may  be  thrown  into  con- 
vulsive movements.  The  hands  are  alternately  clenched  and 
opened,  often  with  a  twitching  movement.  The  arms  may  be 
protruded  as  if  to  avert  some  dreadful  danger,  or  may  be  thrown 
wildly  over  the  head.  In  other  cases  there  is  a  sudden  and  un- 
controllable tendency  to  headlong  flight ;  and  so  strong  is  this 
that  the  boldest  soldiers  may  be  seized  with  a  sudden  panic." 
" Trembling  with  fear,"  an  "aching  heart,"  " shuddering  with 
terror,"  are  not  mere  figurative  expressions  by  any  means.  Men- 
tal fatigue  will  induce  bodily  fatigue.  A  few  weeks  ago  I  made 
some  experiments  that  demonstrate  this  very  clearly.  The  ex- 
periments were  performed  upon  fifty  grammar  school  children 
who  were  about  to  take  an  examination  in  general  history. 
Before  they  took  the  examination  I  had  each  one  endeavor  to 
lift  with  the  dynamometer  all  he  could  with  his  right  hand 
(all  the  pupils  were  right-handed).  I  then  put  down  the 
records  for  each  pupil.  After  their  examination  (which  lasted 
2-J-  hours)  with  its  severe  mental  strain,  I  had  them  do  the  same 
thing  again,  that  is— lift  their  best.  They  were  all,  with  two 
exceptions,  unable  to  lift  as  much  as  they  had  before  entering 
upon  the  intense  mental  activity  of  the  examination. 

Then,  too  prolonged  mental  exercise  draws  off  the  blood  from 
the  rest  of  the  body  in  too  large  quantities,  in  order  to  supply 
the  demands  of  the  wearied  brain.  Thus  a  nervous,  excited, 
brain-weary  person  always  suffers  from  cold  feet  and  fingers. 
After  these  persons  fall  asleep,  when  the  demands  for  blood  on 
the  part  of  the  brain  are  not  so  great,  the  mind  being  less  active, 
the  extremities  again  become  warm.  Mental  activity  always 


44  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

causes  a  rise  of  temperature  in  the  brain.  Over  eighty  localities 
on  the  brain  have  been  examined  with  regard  to  the  effect  of  in- 
tellectual work  on  its  temperature,  and  every  space  thus  exam- 
ined has  shown  that  an  actual  rise  of  temperature  followed  each 
mental  exertion.  In  right-handed  persons  the  rise  of  temperature 
is  greater  on  the  left  side  of  the  brain,  and  in  left-handed  persons 
the  rise  of  temperature  is  greater  on  the  right  side  of  the  brain. 
This  is  because  of  the  fact  that  right-handed  persons  are  all  left- 
brained  and  all  left-handed  persons  are  right-brained  — due  to  the 
fact  that  the  fibers  cross  at  the  base  of  the  brain,  as  I  shall  make 
clear  to  you  in  the  lesson  on  "The  Brain  and  its  Functions." 
Not  long  ago  I  myself  undertook  some  interesting  experiments 
with  reference  to  the  effect  of  mental  activity  upon  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  brain.  The  experiments  were  made  upon  living  dogs. 
I  inserted  thermometric  needles  into  the  substance  of  their  brains. 
After  a  few  hours  of  rest  and  sleep  I  tested  the  animals  by  means  of 
exciting  the  various  senses.  For  example,  I  held  a  piece  of  meat 
to  the  dog's  nose,  and,  as  soon  as  he  smelled  of  it,  the  ther- 
mometric needle  indicated  a  rise  of  temperature  amounting  to  a 
little  less  than  one  degree.  When  I  called  to  it  playfully,  there 
were  similar  results  in  the  way  of  rise  in  temperature.  This  shows 
that  the  activity  induced  by  stimulating  the  different  senses  ac- 
tually heated  the  brain  mass  itself.  Mosso's  observations  on 
three  persons  whose  brains  had  been  laid  bare  by  injury  to  the 
skull  gives  us  the  best  direct  evidence  of  the  fact  that  mental 
activity,  either  intellectual  or  emotional,  causes  a  sudden  rush  of 
blood  to  the  brain,  increasing  the  heat  thereof.  I  should  like  to 
have  you  notice  the  tracing  herewith  appended,  that  was  made 
with  Mosso's  Sphygmograph.  By  means  of  this  little  instrument 
the  pulse  beats  are  recorded  in  the  form  of  tracings  on  smoked 
paper. 

The  tracing,  A  (see  opposite  page),  was  made  by  the  pulse  dur- 
ing intellectual  activity,  while  B  was  made  by  the  pulse  during 
mental  repose.  Each  sort  of  mental  activity  produces  its  own 
particular  pulse  tracing.  You  get  a  different  tracing  when  the 
mind  is  occupied  in  adding  numbers  from  what  you  get  when 


CONNECTION  BETWEEN  BODY  AND  MIND.  45 

the  mind  is  engaged  in  interpreting  the  difficult  passages  of  a 
scientific  work. 

This  intimate  causal  relation  between  body  and  mind  shows 
itself  again  with  reference  to  the  special  question  as  to  the  con- 
nection between  mental  effort  and  one's  diet.  While  you  cannot 
measure  the  activities  of  thought  in  terms  of  beef  and  bread, you 
are  more  than  warranted  in  maintaining  that  a  strong  rich 
mind  cannot  be  the  tenant  of  a  poorly-fed  body.  I  know  that 
there  are  some  isolated  chapters  in  history  which  abound  in  sen- 
timental gush  concerning  this  or  that  eminent  writer  and  thinker 
who  lived  in  an  attic,  subsisting  on  little  besides  cold  potatoes. 
If  such  statements  are  ever  authenticated,  they  will  certainly 
prove  very  rare  exceptions  ;  and  even  if  it  be  true  that  these  men 


B 


could  do  a  considerable  amount  of  mental  work  on  a  diet  of  cold 
potatoes  and  white  beans,  we  are  still  led  to  inquire  as  to 
whether  or  no  these  particular  men  could  not  have  done  a  great 
deal  more  work  and  lived  longer  had  they  varied  their  rations 
occasionally,  or  even  semi-occasionally,  with  porter-house  steak. 
It  is  a  dictum  of  mental  as  well  as  physical  hygiene  that  it  is  far 
better  to  stint  one's  self  along  any  other  line  rather  than  deprive 
ourselves  of  food  of  needed  quality  and  quantity.  I  say  stint, 
for  it  is  not  economy.  Poor  food  means  poor  blood  and  not 
enough  of  it,  and  this  in  turn  means  a  brain  starving  for  oxygen. 
Such  a  brain  is  always  a  weary  brain,  slow  to  respond  and 
erratic  in  its  activities;  and  this  fatigued,  poisoned  brain  can 
never  sustain  mental  processes  of  high  character  or  strict 
integrity.  Therefore,  I  say,  that  in  treating  of  the  reciprocal 


46  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

influence  that  obtains  between  body  and  mind,  the  question  of 
diet  is  one  of  special  importance  to  those  having  the  care  of 
children,  and  should  be  discussed  at  great  length  by  educators  in 
order  that  it  may  receive  in  every  quarter  the  attention  it  so 
richly  deserves.  A  locomotive,  capable  of  drawing  a  train  of 
1,000  tons  one  mile  in  three  minutes  cannot  make  the  same  time 
with  a  heavier  load.  It  is  manifestly  impossible.  So  in  the  case 
of  the  child,  a  given  task  requires  a  certain  amount  of  brain  em 
ergy,  and  without  sufficient  physical  nourishment  to  sustain  the 
brain,  the  task  must  be  more  or  less  incomplete.  Almost  univer- 
sally wrong  impressions  prevail  as  to  the  proper  nourishment  of 
children.  As  a  rule  they  are  underfed.  Too  little  variety  is  given 
them,  while  the  food  lacks  the  nourishing  qualities  which  the 
child's  system  demands.  It  would  seem  to  most  mothers  an 
absurd  rule  to  lay  down  for  their  guidance  that  children  should 
be  given  whatever  their  appetite  demands.  Yet,  if  the  natural 
cravings  of  a  child's  appetite  have  always  been  satisfied,  the  most 
judicious  mother  need  not  fear  yielding  to  its  request.  Let  us  go 
slightly  outside  of  our  province  and  look  a  little  more  carefully 
into  the  physiological  side  of  the  question  in  the  way  Herbert 
Spencer  so  excellently  presents  it,  and  I  think  we  may  answer  some 
of  the  objections  which  my  statement  may  have  aroused.  What 
does  a  child  ask  for  most  frequently  ?  Sweets,  you  say,  candy  or 
sugar ;  fruits,  possibly  unripe  preferred,  meats,  etc.  Any  physi- 
ology will  tell  you  that  sugar  is  a  necessary  element  to  the  vita] 
processes,  and  that  many  other  compounds  are  converted  within 
the  body  into  that  very  sugar  which  the  system  demands  as  a 
heat  making  power.  Almost  as  universally,  children  dislike  fatty 
food,  which  is  another  heat  maker;  so  an  extra  amount  of  saccha- 
rine matter  is  called  for  in  order  to  produce  the  required  heat. 
The  craving  for  fruit  is  a  normal  one,  and  the  acids  of  fruit  form  a 
natural  and  healthful  tonic  when  taken  in  moderation.  It  is  the 
fact  that  these  kinds  of  food  are  denied  them,  and  that  this  crav- 
ing is  so  long  repressed,  that  leads  to  the  immoderate  indul- 
gence of  the  appetite  when  the  usual  restraints  are  removed.  Then 
the  question  of  giving  children  the  full  allowance  of  meat  is  a  dis- 


CONNECTION  BETWEEN  BODY  AND  MIND.  47 

puted  one.  In  many  cases  economy  suggests  that  "  very  much 
meat  is  not  good  for  little  boys  and  girls,"  and  this  statement 
has  largely  come  to  be  regarded  as  a  gastronomical  fact.  Relia- 
ble statistics  have  already  proven  conclusively  that  the  child 
brought  up  on  a  bread  and  potato  diet  lacks  that  physical 
strength  and  activity,  even  though  the  weight  and  size  be  equal, 
which  the  meat-fed  child  possesses.  This  does  not  apply  to  the 
very  young  child,  but  to  those  beyond  the  age  of  three  who 
manifest  considerable  vigor.  Even  more  than  adults  in  propor- 
tion to  their  size  they  need  strengthening  food,  so  that  not  only 
the  daily  waste  may  be  supplied,  but  the  extra  nourishment 
demanded  for  growth  may  also  be  furnished  in  abundance,  if  full 
and  healthy  development  is  to  be  attained. 

Another  usually  faulty  point  in  children's  diet  is  its  monotony 
—too  little  variety,  essential  to  secure  the  needed  elements,  is 
given.  The  child's  weariness  of  a  cereal  food  for  breakfast,  or  a 
bread-and-milk  supper,  suggests  that  a  different  variety  of  food 
is  demanded  in  order  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  system,  and  the 
distaste  for  the  customary  articles  of  food  is  not  a  meaningless 
" freak  of  appetite."  The  required  amount  of  brain  energy  can 
of  course  be  supplied  by  a  greater  quantity  of  less  nourishing 
food,  but  economy  of  the  forces  of  the  stomach  would  require 
that  the  food  supply  be  a  less  quantity  of  the  most  nourish- 
ing substances,  rather  than  a  greater  quantity  of  those  contain- 
ing less  nutriment. 

As  good  digestion  is  an  aid  to  cheerfulness,  so  cheerfulness 
always  induces  good  digestion.  How  important  is  it,  then,  that 
the  child  under  your  care  be  kept  in  a  happy  frame  of  mind. 
" Laugh  and  grow  fat"  is  not  a  meaningless  jumble  of  words, 
and  this  common  go-to-mill  expression  may  seem  crude,  but  it 
really  indicates  something  that  should  be  a  tenet  of  psycholog- 
ical doctrine,  incorporated  as  a  part  of  the  "creed"  of  every 
individual.  Besides,  the  habits  of  mind  surely  mould  the  bodily 
form  just  as  single  thoughts  cause  the  facial  expression  to 
change  temporarily.  The  animal  expression,  the  beefy  neck,  the 
bleared  eyes,  and  other  characteristics  of  the  dissipated,  are  not 


48  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

alone  physical  effects  of  the  indulgence  in  alcohol  or  the  gratifi- 
cation of  the  lower  appetites.  No,  indeed ;  the  habits  of  thinking 
continually  upon  these  fleshly  indulgences  and  vices  plays  a  very 
prominent  part  in  thus  permanently  modifying  the  contour  of 
the  head  and  face. 

I  need  not  go  further  into  this  question  of  the  reciprocal  action 
of  mind  and  body.  I  simply  submit  to  you  such  facts  as  those 
above  given.  They  are  only  a  few  of  the  large  number  that 
might  be  adduced,  and  I  am  sure  that  each  one  of  you  could  sup- 
plement these  that  I  have  given  with  many,  even  more  interesting, 
from  your  large  fund  of  observation  and  experience. 


LESSON  V. 

THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM. 

AN  inanimate  thing  never  responds  to  external  impressions. 
If  you  handle  a  piece  of  iron,  a  slab  of  marble  or  a  lump  of  coal 
there  is  no  movement  by  way  of  answer  to  your  touch.  These 
and  all  other  inanimate  objects  are  utterly  incapable  of  respond- 
ing in  any  active  or  visible  manner,  either  to  natural  changes  in 
the  environment  or  to  modifications  brought  about  by  the  hand 
of  man.  However,  in  the  world  of  animate  things,  even  among 
the  very  lowest  forms,  we  observe  a  marked  difference.  We  know 
that  all  life  is  growth  and  all  growth  is  movement  of  some  sort. 
A  thing  which  does  not  grow  you  say  no  longer  lives;  it  is  dead. 
You  know  that  to  live  a  thing  must  grow— and  all  species  of 
growth  are  merely  forms  of  movement.  So  the  tree  differs  from 
the  piece  of  iron,  the  slab  of  marble  or  lump  of  coal,  in  that  it 
responds  to  its  environment.  When  the  warmth  and  moisture 
of  spring  follow  the  wintry  snows,  the  tree  puts  forth  its  leaves, 
covers  itself  with  the  bloom  of  flowers,  yields  us  fruit,  and  so  on. 
The  pond-lily,  the  "four  o'clock,"  or  M.  Jalapa,  will  open  and 
shut  at  regular  hours  of  the  day.  The  "  sensitive  plant "  will  curl 
and  withdraw  its  leaves  at  the  slightest  touch. 

It  is,  however,  admitted  by  all  that  many  of  the  lowest  forms 
of  life  cannot  be  assigned  to  either  the  vegetable  or  animal  king- 
doms with  any  degree  of  assurance.  Take,  for  instance,  the  Vol- 
vox  Globator;  the  botanist  regards  it  as  a  plant,  while  the 
zoologist  assigns  it  to  the  animal  kingdom.  Somewhat  similar 
are  the  Gregarini,  which  are  found  in  the  intestinal  tracts  of  ani- 
mals. But  there  is  no  difficulty  in  finding  a  line  of  demarkation 
between  the  higher  animals  and  other  forms  of  existence.  If,  in 
hurrying  through  the  crowded  and  busy  streets  of  a  great  city,  a 
man  jostles  against  a  barber  pole,  or  lamp  post,  or  collides  with 

L.  P.-4  (49) 


50  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

a  tree  or  the  wooden  Indian  sign  in  front  of  a  cigar  store,  we  find 
that  none  of  these  objects  are  in  the  least  disturbed  by  the  occur- 
rence. They  stand  as  firmly,  securely  and  stolidly  as  ever. 
There  is  no  'response  of  any  sort  on  their  part.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  man  responds  with  a  sudden  start,  and,  unlike  the 
wooden  Indian  sign,  his  face  completely  changes  its  expression, 
while  his  devotions,  which  are  accompanied  by  various  exclama- 
tory outbursts,  are  feelingly  directed  toward  the  contused  parts 
of  his  body.  He  feels.  The  barber  pole,  lamp  post,  tree  and 
Indian  sign  do  not  feel.  Or,  to  express  the  same  thing  in  equiva- 
lent terms— the  man  has  a  nervous  system ;  the  other  things  have 
no  nervous  system. 

You  already  realize  the  fact  that  the  body  and  mind  are 
closely  connected,  and  that  Psychology  must  always  take  this 
connection  into  account.  This  and  many  other  facts  make  at 
least  a  general  knowledge  of  the  nervous  system  absolutely 
essential  to  the  student  of  Psychology.  The  nerve  elements  are 
capable  of  being  divided  into  two  classes — (1)  nerve  fibers  and 
(2)  nerve  cells.  In  addition  to  these  two  a  third  might  be  men- 
tioned— an  intermediate  basis  tissue  called  the  neuroglia,  which 
exists  more  abundantly  in  the  larger  nerve  centers,  such  as  the 
brain  and  spinal  cord.  It  has  been  quite  generally  regarded  as 
mere  connective  tissue,  and  some  authors  give  to  it  the  name 
"nerve  cement."  It  is  highly  probable  that  in  all  animals  the 
new  nerve  fibers  and  new  nerve  cells  are  evolved  from  this  inter- 
mediate substance.  What  is  generally  called  a  "nerve"  (as 
when  the  dentist  speaks  of  "treating  a  nerve")  appears  to  the 
naked  eye  as  a  cord  of  a  whitish  color.  If  we  closely  examine 
this  nerve  we  soon  discover  that  it  is  a  bundle  made  up  of  many 
smaller  strands.  Each  of  these  strands  is  called  a  nerve  fiber, 
which  is  in  turn  composed  of  elementary  fibrils.  The  nerve  fibers 
vary  in  thickness  from  y^o^  to  TrnroTo  °*  an  mcn-  The  smaller 
ones  are  found  at  the  termination  of  the  nerves  in  muscles, 
glands  and  membranes,  as  well  as  near  the  endings  in  the  skin  on 
the  outer  surface  of  the  body.  Here  they  are  extremely  fine  and 
interlace  with  one  another, forming  an  intricate  network.  Some- 


THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM.  *51 

times  the  fibrils  fuse  more  or  less  completely,  so  that  the  fiber 
appears  either  structureless  or  merely  shows  signs  of  fibrillation. 
The  fibers  are  of  two  classes,  the  medullated  and  non-medullated. 
The  medullated  are  so  named  because  they  consist  of  a  central 
nerve  axis  surrounded  and  enwrapped  by  a  sheath  of  very  thin 
membrane  and  a  semi-liquid  granular  substance,  called  the  "me- 
dullary sheath."  The  medullated  nerve  fibers  are  found  only  in 
vertebrate  animals,  and  are  especially  abundant  in  the  brain  and 
spinal  cord.  The  central  portion  of  the  medullated  nerve  fiber— 
the  portion  enveloped  by  the  medullary  sheath— is  its  most  im- 
portant constituent ;  it  is  almost  translucent,  and  is  called  the 
"  axis  cylinder."  The  chief  characteristic  of  the  non-medullated 
fibers  is  that  in  them  there  is  no  sheath  or  outer  membrane  pres- 
ent. In  nearly  all  the  visual  nerves,  as  well  as  the  fibers  of  the 
olfactory  and  some  others,  the  sheath  is  absent.  As  stated 
above,  both  the  medullated  and  the  non-medullated  nerve  fibers 
tend  to  group  themselves  into  cords  or  fascicles  of  different  sizes, 
tfce  individual  fibers  of  which  run  parallel  to  one  another  and  are 
invested  by  a  sheath.  These  again,  in  their  course  toward  the 
center,  collect  into  larger  and  larger  fascicles,  the  different  con- 
stituents of  which  are  all  bound  together  into  one  white  nerve. 
These  nerves  frequently  contain  within  the  same  fascicles  both  in- 
going and  outgoing  fibers,  and  are  then  denominated  "  mixed  " 
nerves.  Others  contain  only  those  fibers  which  carry  the  cur- 
rents in  and  are  called  sensory  or  afferent  nerves.  And  a  third 
class  is  that  group  of  nerves  which  contains  fibers  whose  function 
is  to  convey  impulses  toward  the  periphery.  They  are  called  the 
motor  or  efferent  nerves. 

The  nerve  cells  are  very  different  from  each  other  both  in  size 
and  shape,  as  well  as  in  their  special  functions. 

In  size  they  range  from  -^Vfr  to  ^-^  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  and 
in  shape  they  are  as  varied  as  the  feathery  snowflakes  of  a 
winter's  storm.  Thus  the  brain  abounds  in  cells  which  are  pyra- 
midal in  shape,  while  the  multipolar  ganglion  cells  are  char- 
acteristic of  the  anterior  or  motor  region  of  the  spinal  cord. 
Nerve  cells  are  more  or  less  granulated  bodies,  each  of  which 


52  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

contains  a  large  nucleus,  and  within  this  is  usually  a  distinct 
"nucleolus." 

The  substance  of  the  nerve  cells  gives  off  two  or  more  pro- 
cesses which  are  either  much  branched  (called  ramifying  pro- 
cesses) or  simple.  It  is  by  means  of  these  processes  of  various 
sorts  that  the  nerve  cells  are  united  to  the  central  extremities  of 
the  nerve  and  to  each  other.  Very  frequently,  under  the  micro- 
scope, fibrillations  can  be  seen  passing  from  one  nerve  process  in 
a  curved  line  through  the  body  of  the  cell  and  into  another  pro- 
cess; while  in  others  the  same  process  can  be  traced  through  the 
cell  in  various  directions.  Thus  it  is  arranged  so  that  many 


FIGURE  1.— A  multipolar  nerve-cell,  with  branching  (1,  2, 3, 4,  5)  nerve  processes, 
a,  nucleus,  containing  nucleolus. 

nerve  currents  can  pass  through  one  of  these  compound  nerve 
fibers  just  as,  by  use  of  the  Edison  key,  one  telegraphic  message 
can  be  received  and  another  can  be  sent  over  the  same  wire  and 
at  the  same  time. 

The  exact  manner  in  which  nerve  fibers  and  nerve  cells  are  con- 
nected is  not  known  as  yet.  The  views  of  Retzius  on  that  point 
are  certainly  the  best.*  At  any  rate  it  is  very  evident  that  cells 
and  fibers  have  no  functional  existence  apart  from  each  other. 
Whenever  and  wherever  we  have  nerve  fibers  we  have  nerve  cells, 
and  vice  versa.  Viewed  in  their  entirety  with  reference  to  their 
functions  and  inter  dependence,  indirect  as  it  may  seem  to  be,  it  is 

*Zur  Kentniss  d.  Nerven  systems  d.  Crustaceen,  Gustav  Retzius,  Leipzig,  1890. 


THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM. 


53 


evident  that  nerve  fibers  and  nerve  cells  together  constitute  a 
system  — the  nervous  system.  The  nervous  system  of  man  and 
the  higher  animals  consists,  then,  of  the  folio  wing  necessary  parts : 
(1)  Conducting  Nerves,  comprising  (a)  afferent  sensory  nerves 
carrying  the  currents  in,  (b)  efferent  motor  nerves  carrying  the 
currents  out,  (c)  mixed  nerves;  (2)  Central  organs,  such  as  the 
spinal  cord  and  brain;  (3)  the  end  organs  (a)  of  sense,  as  the 
skin,  the  eye,  the  ear  and  taste  bulbs,  (b)  of  motion,  such  as 
the  attachments  which  connect  the  nerves  and  muscles. 

The  spinal  cord  and  brain  are  the  great  cen- 
ters of  the  cerebro-spinal  system.  These  great 
masses  of  nervous  matter  are  situated  in  the 
bony  cavity  of  the  skull  and  spinal  column. 
Both  the  brain  and  spinal  cord  are  invested 
with  three  coverings  or  membranes.  The  outer 
one  is  called  the  dura  mater,  and  is  tough,  white 
and  fibrous.  It  adheres  very  closely  to  the 
bones,  especially  in  the  skull.  The  second  is 
called  the  arachnoid  membrane,  and  is  smooth, 
firm,  and  is  kept  very  moist  by  means  of  an  al- 
kaline fluid.  The  inner  membrane  is  vascular, 
and  is  called  the  pia.  Its  network  of  fine  arte- 
ries and  veins  are  thus  in  contact  with  the  nerv-  showing  section  of 
ous  tissue  itself.  The  function  of  these  three  the  spinal  cord, 
membranes  is  to  protect,  hold  together  and  nour-  a-  Anterior  fissure. 

.,..,..,,,  .      ,  ,         ,  , .      ,  &.  Posterior  fissure. 

ish  with  blood  the  spinal  cord  and  the  brain.         c  central  canal. 

The  spinal  cord  is  a  long  tube  of  nervous  mat- 
ter, and  extends  throughout  the  entire  length  of  the  spinal  canal. 
It  is,  therefore,  from  fifteen  to  eighteen  inches  long  in  the  adult 
person.  It  is  nearly  cylindrical  in  shape,  its  front  and  back  sur- 
faces being  somewhat  flattened.  The  spinal  cord  is  almost  com- 
pletely divided  throughout  its  entire  length  into  right-and-left 
halves,  by  two  median  fissures.  The  one  in  front  (anterior)  is 
the  broader,  the  one  behind  (posterior)  is  narrower  but  deeper. 
The  two  halves  of  the  cord  are  held  together  by  two  bands  called 
commissures,  which  are  situated  at  the  base  of  each  fissure;  the 


FIG.  2 


54 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


one  in  front  is  the  "  white  commissure,"  the  posterior  one  is  the 
"gray  commissure."  The  fibers  of  this  posterior  gray  commis- 
sure inclose  a  minute  canal  which  extends  the  entire  length  of  the 
cord  (central  canal). 

Each  half  of  the  spinal  cord  is  subdivided  by  its  nerve  roots 
into  three  columns.  These  are  (1)  the  anterior  column  which  lies 
between  the  antero-median  fissure  and  anterior  roots;  (2)  the 
posterior  column,  which  is  between  the  posterior  nerve  roots  and 


ANTERIOR 

ROOT 


5PINAL  GANGLION 


MOTOR 
TR/in 


SENSORY  TRACTS 


FIGURE  3.— Section  of  spinal  cord,  showing  an- 
terior (motor)  and  posterior  (sensory)  roots 
(after  Edinger). 


FIGURE  4.  —  Transverse  sec- 
tions (schematic)  of  the 
spinal  cord  at  different 
elevations. 


the  poster o-median  fissure;  (3)  the  lateral  column  lying  between 
the  anterior  and  posterior  nerve  roots.  This  subdivision  of  each 
half  of  the  cord  into  three  columns,  as  well  as  the  general  ar- 
rangement, is  plainly  shown  in  transverse  sections  at  almost  any 
elevation.  The  cord  comprises  both  white  and  gray  matter,  the 
white  being  on  the  outside.  The  relative  amount  of  white  and 
gray  matter  varies  at  different  localities  of  the  cord.  The  gray 
matter,  which  is  surrounded  by  the  white,  takes  in  each  half  of  the 


THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM. 


55 


cord,  the  shape  of  a  crescent.  The  horns  of  this  crescent  termi- 
nate at  the  nerve  roots  just  where  the  fibers  emerge  from  the 
cord.  The  anterior  horn  is  rounded;  the  posterior  is  long  and 
narrow.  When  looked  at  in  a  transverse  section  it  is  seen  that 
the  gray  columns  and  their  commissures  form  a  figure  something 
like  the  letter  H.  This  can  be  plainly  seen  with  the  naked  eye. 

The  cord  contains  both  nerve  fibers  and  nerve  cells.    The  ex- 
ternal, or  white  part  of  the  cord,  consists  chiefly  of  fibers,  to- 


POSTEKI°R  PART 


FIGURE  5.— Cross-section  of  spinal  cord  (after  Edinger).  a,  b,  c,  d,  sensory  fibers 
entering  the  posterior  horns;  v,  TV,  x,  y,  z,  motor  nerves  passing  out  from  the 
anterior  horns.  The  globular  (sensory)  cells  and  pyramidal  (motor)  cells  are 
also  shown. 

gether  with  connective  tissue  and  blood  vessels  derived  from  the 
pia.  The  gray  portion  of  the  cord  contains,  besides  fibers,  con- 
nective tissue  and  blood  vessels,  an  infinite  number  of  nerve 
cells.  Almost  all  the  nerve  cells  are  multipolar,  and  they  abound 
chiefly  in  the  anterior  and  posterior  horns  of  each  crescent.  The 
cells  of  the  anterior  horn  are  large,  very  distinct  and  stellate, 
forming  a  very  well-defined  group;  those  of  the  posterior  horn 
are  smaller  in  size. 

The  number  of  nerve  elements  in  the  spinal  cord  has  been  care- 
fully counted  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  lower  animals.    For  ex- 


56  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ample,  Birge  counted  the  fibers  in  the  cord  of  a  large  number  of 
frogs  and  found  that  in  the  anterior  roots  they  varied  from  6, 000 
to  12,000,  according  to  the  size  and  age  of  the  animal.  Of  the 
longitudinal  fibers  it  can  be  said  that  some  ascend  from  below 
upward,  conducting  sensory  impressions  to  the  brain,  while 
others  descend  from  the  brain  and  higher  regions  of  the  cord  to 
the  lower,  and  conduct  motor  impulse  to  the  muscles.  There  are 
also  countless  horizontal  and  oblique  fibers.  Thus  the  nervous  ele- 
ments of  the  spinal  cord  are  arranged  so  as  to  be  both  a  con- 
ductor and  a  center  of  nervous  impressions  and  impulses.  It  not 
only  conducts  the  impressions  —  for  example,  a  touch  sensation 
from  the  finger  upwards  to  the  brain  and  the  motor  impulses 
from  the  brain  downward  to  the  muscles — but  it  is  also  a  great 
nerve  center.  It  can  do  a  large  amount  of  work  by  itself,  as  well 
as  obey  the  commands  of  the  brain.  Many  human  activities  are 
controlled  by  the  spinal  cord  alone,  without  the  least  assistance 
from  the  brain.  The  decapitated  frog  is  capable  of  making  a 
considerable  series  of  intelligent  movements.  The  Praying  Man- 
tis will  continue  to  fight  its  antagonist  a  long  time  after  its  head 
is  severed.  Though  the  human  spinal  cord  is  divided  into  col- 
umns and  ramified  by  so  many  tracts  running  in  every  conceiv- 
able direction,  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  the  cord  is 
anatomically  as  well  as  functionally  continuous. 

You  see,  then,  that  the  spinal  cord  is  a  wonderfully  ingenious 
mechanism,  made  up  of  nervous  elements  so  combined  as  to 
serve  two  great  purposes.  Not  only  do  we  find  it  a  pathway  to 
and  from  the  brain  for  those  impressions  originating  at  various 
points  on  the  periphery  as  well  as  the  impulses  which  take  their 
rise  in  the  brain,  but  it  is  itself  a  well-organized  nervous  center — 
yes,  more;  it  is  a  well-organized  group  of  numberless  nervous 
centers,  each  one  of  which  maybe  capable  of,  and  especially  fitted 
for,  performing  a  certain  piece  of  work.  All  these  centers  in  the 
cord  are  by  means  of  the  various  nerve  fibers  bound  together 
up  and  down,  crosswise  and  obliquely,  making  them  capable  of 
united  action  either  in  originating  new  impulses  and  processes, 
or  in  obeying  the  behests  of  the  brain. 


LESSON  VI. 

THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS. 

WE  now  come  to  a  brief  description  of  the  brain  which  includes 
all  that  mass  of  nervous  matter  which  is  contained  within  the  bony 
cavity  of  the  skull.  It  comprises  four  general  divisions  which  are 
so  apparent  as  to  be  readily  distinguishable,  even  by  the  casual 
observer.  These  parts  are  named  (1)  medulla  oblongata,  (2)pons, 
(3)  cerebellum  or  little  brain,  and  (4)  cerebrum. 

The  medulla  is  directly  above  the  spinal  cord  and  continuous 
with  it.  It  is  somewhat  pyramidal  in  shape  and  is  about  one 
and  one-fourth  inches  long.  Like  the  cord,  it  consists  of  both 
white  and  gray  matter.  The  cerebellum  lies  above  and  imme- 
diately behind  the  medulla.  The  pons,  or  bridge,  lies  above  and 
in  front  of  the  medulla,  with  which  it  is  also  continuous. 

With  reference  to  the  medulla  it  is  also  important  to  add  that 
it  is  a  bilateral  organ  with  its  two  halves  joined  together  by 
tough  commissural  fibers  which  cross  from  one  side  to  the  other 
in  an  oblique  direction.  The  fibers  of  the  spinal  cord  undergo 
an  important  rearrangement  in  their  passage  upward  into  the 
medulla.  Thus  you  see  that  each  half  of  the  brain  is  connected 
with  the  sensory  organs  at  the  periphery  of  the  opposite  half  of  the 
body,  and  also  with  its  muscles.  The  former  relation  is  brought 
about  by  the  sensory  channels  decussating  at  the  base  of  the 
brain  and  along  the  spinal  cord ;  and  the  latter  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  outgoing  nerve  channels  or  motor  stimuli  pass  from 
each  half  of  the  brain  to  the  opposite  side  of  the  body,  decussat- 
ing with  one  another  in  the  medulla.  This  rearrangement  con- 
sists in  the  fibers  passing  through  the  left  half  of  the  cord  and 
coming  from  the  left  side  of  the  body,  crossing  and  passing  up- 
ward to  the  right  side  of  the  brain,  and  vice  versa.  Thus  it  is 

(57) 


58 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


FIGURE  6.— Side  view  of  the  human  brain.  (Ecker.)— F,  frontal;  P,  parietal;  O, 
occipital,  and  T,  temoporo-sphenoidal  lobes ;  S,  fissure  of  Sylvius ;  A,  anterior, 
and  B,  posterior,  central  convolutions;  R,  fissure  of  Rolando;  M,  medulla; 
Cb,  cerebellum ;  C,  cerebrum ;  Pn,  pons. 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS. 


59 


that  all  persons  who  are  right-handed  are  "left-brained"— i.  e., 
the  larger  amount  of  brain  work  is  done  by  the  left  hemi- 
sphere in  right-handed  individuals.  The  same  relation  holds  true 
with  reference  to  the  left-handed  base-ball  pitcher,  whether  his 
curved  balls  be  "in-shoots,"  "high -ins,"  or  "out-drops,"  they 
are  controlled  by  the  right  cerebral  hemisphere.  You  can  then 
readily  see  what  a  serious  thing  it  is  to  correct  left-handedness  in 
a  child.  The  left-handed  child  is  not  only 
left-handed  but  is  right-brained  as  well.  He 
is  also  left-eyed.  I  mean  by  this  that  his 
left  rather  than  his  right  eye  controls  the 
movement  of  his  hand,  and  after  a  child  has 
been  accustomed  to  use  his  left  hand  for  the 
first  three  years  of  his  childhood,  it  is  by  no 
means  a  small  matter  to  induce  him  to  give 
preference  to  his  right  when  the  change  in- 
volves almost  a  complete  transformation 
within  the  brain  itself.  Certain  it  is  that  the 
mental  growth  is,  for  the  time  being,  in  a 
measure  retarded,  and  it  is  a  question 
whether  mental  development  should  ever  be 
sacrificed  to  convenience.  It  might  be  add- 
ed that  nearly  all  blind  people  read  with  the 
left  hand,  and  with  many  other  individuals 
it  is  used  when  fine  discriminations  are  to  be 
made,  bearing  out  the  idea  of  Shakespeare, 

when  he  says : 

FIGURE  7.  — C,  cerebrum; 

m,       ,    .    ,.      ,        ,  ,     , ,    ,,  M,  medulla;  m,  crossing 

The  daintier  hand  hath  the  finer  sense.  of  fiberg .  s>  splnal  cord 

In  the  cerebellum  we  find  that  the  general  arrangement  of  the 
white  and  gray  nervous  matter  is  just  the  opposite  of  what  is 
found  in  the  medulla;  for  the  white  is  the  interior  portion,  while 
the  gray  is  on  the  outside.  Looked  at  even  superficially,  it  is 
found  that  the  cerebellum  consists  of  two  hemispheres  united  by 
a  median  lobe  called  the  vermiform  process.  The  two  hemi- 
spheres are  joined  to  each  other  by  means  of  countless  transverse 


60 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


fibers,  and  the  entire  cerebellum  is  connected  with  the  medulla. 
The  surface  of  the  cerebellum  presents  a  peculiar  arrangement 
due  to  subdivision  of  its  gray  substance  into  a  multitude  of  thin 
plates  or  latnellae,  by  numerous  fissures.  These  thin  plates  are 
penetrated  more  or  less  by  fine  lines  of  white  matter.  When  a 


FIGURE  8— (Convolutions— Fissures).    View  of  the  human  brain  from  aftove,  show- 
ing the  two  hemispheres  as  well  as  principal  fissures  and  convolutions. 

vertical  section  is  made  through  the  organ  it  is  found  that  the 
prolongations  of  white  matter  branching  off  into  the  interior  of 
the  several  gray  lamellae  give  to  the  section  an  arborescent  ap- 
pearance, known  by  the  fanciful  name  of  arbor-vitse.  The  fibers 
that  pass  in  a  transverse  direction  go  from  one  hemisphere  of  the 
cerebellum  to  the  opposite  side,  thus  constituting  the  connecting 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  61 

arrangement  by  means  of  which  the  two  hemispheres  of  the  cere- 
bellum become  anatomically  and  functionally  one. 

The  pons  is  commonly  called  the  "  bridge  of  the  brain."  It  is 
cuboidal  in  form,  and  consists  of  both  white  and  gray  matter. 
The  white  nerve  fibers  pass  through  the  substance  of  the  pons, 
either  transversely  or  longitudinally.  The  gray  matter  of  the 
pons  is  scattered  irregularly  through  its  substance,  appearing 
also  on  the  posterior  but  not  on  the  anterior  surface.  The  nerve 
cells  of  the  pons  are,  as  a  rule,  multipolar  and  stellate. 

The  cerebrum,  or  great  brain,  forms  much  the  largest  division 
of  the  nervous  mass  inclosed  within  the  bony  cavity  of  the  skull. 
(See  Fig.  6).  It  is  an  ovoid  in  shape,  and  is  divided  into  two 
great  halves,  or  hemispheres,  by  means  of  a  great  median  longitu- 
dinal fissure.  At  the  bottom  of  this  fissure,  when  the  hemispheres 
are  spread  apart,  can  be  seen  a  broad  white  band  of  nervous 
matter  (called  the  corpus  callosum),  by  means  of  which  the  two 
halves  of  the  cerebrum  are  held  firmly  together.  The  surface  of 
the  two  hemispheres  is  traversed  by  many  fissures  of  varying 
depth.  It  might  be  said  that  the  external  surface  of  the  cerebral 
hemispheres  appears  like  a  tract  of  land  traversed  by  many 
crooked  brooks  and  rivers  producing  numberless  furrows,  which 
are  named  sulci  or  fissures,  and  the  ridges  between  them  are 
called  convolutions.  Between  these  various  fissures  are  the 
folds  of  tissue  known  as  convolutions,  or  gyri.  No  two  brains 
are  alike  in  the  number  and  depth  of  the  fissures,  or  in  the  num- 
ber and  prominence  of  the  convolutions;  indeed,  the  two  halves 
of  the  same  brain  are  not  exactly  alike  in  this  respect. 

By  means  of  the  various  principal  fissures  it  is  an  easy  matter 
to  map  out  the  two  hemispheres  of  the  cerebrum  into  five  lobes. 
These  are  called  the  Frontal,  Parietal,  Temporal,  Occipital,  and 
Island  of  Reil.  All  but  the  Island  of  Reil  are  shown  in  Fig.  6  and 
Fig.  8.  It  is  concealed  beneath  the  frontal,  parietal,  and  tem- 
poral lobes. 

In  all  parts  of  the  cerebral  cortex,  the  gray  matter  is  found  on 
the  outside,  while  the  white  matter  is  within.  The  thickness  of 
the  gray  matter  on  the  brain  surface  undergoes  a  gradual  increase 


62 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


among  vertebrate  animals.  This  gray  layer  is  so  thin  in  fishes 
that  the  surface  of  the  cerebrum  appears  almost  white  to  the 
naked  eye. 

But  the  form  and  distribution  of  the  nerve  cells  is  not  the 
same  at  different  layers  of  the  cortex  even  in  the  same  locality. 
The  thickness  of  this  gray  cortex  varies  from  one-thirteenth  to 
more  than  one-eighth  of  an  inch,  and  in  it  five  layers  of  cells  are 
usually  distinguishable.  There  are  about  eighteen  million  of  nerve 


,-C 


c 


FIGURE  9.— Schematic  drawing  of  coronal  section— across  both  hemispheres  of 
the  brain,    cc,  outer  gray  layer  or  condex;  a,  corpus  callosum. 

cells  to  every  cubic  inch  of  gray  brain  matter.  A  large  number  of 
these  cells  are  pyramidal  in  shape,  so  as  to  admit  of  close  packing 
together.  The  human  brain  is  relatively  larger  than  that  of  any 
other  animal,  except  the  smaller  birds,  such  as  the  canary.  It  is 
also  absolutely  larger  and  heavier  than  the  brain  of  any  known 
animal  save  the  elephant  (8  1-2  to  10  Ibs.),  and  the  largest 
whales  (6  Ibs.).  Exner  has  compiled  the  following  table,  which 
shows  the  relation  that  obtains  between  the  weight  of  the  brain 
and  the  weight  of  the  body.  This  table  also  shows  that  there  is 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS. 


63 


a  sort  of  general  correspondence  between  the  size  and  weight  of 
the  brain  of  any  animal  and  the  rank  of  this  animal  in  the  scale 
of  intelligence. 

TABLE  SHOWING  RELATION  OF  THE  WEIGHT  OF  THE  BRAIN  TO  THE 
WEIGHT  OF  THE  BODY  IN  VARIOUS  ANIMALS. 


kand  tortoise  

1:  2,250 

Cat  

1:160 

Shad    

1:  1,837 

Eagle  

1-156 

OTS. 

1-  860 

Rabbit 

!•  140 

Kangaroo  

1:  800 

Pigeon  

1:104 

Tadpole  

1  :  720 

Rat..t  

1:82 

Elephant  

1:  500 

Gibbon  

]  :  50 

Sheep 

1-  345 

Sai  ape  .... 

1-  25 

Dos:  ... 

1  :  305 

Canary.... 

.    1:14 

You  can  readily  find  some  discrepancies  between  the  rank  as- 
signed in  this  table  and  the  animal's  actual  position  in  the  scale 
of  intelligence.  It  is  obvious  enough  that  the  order  indicated 
does  not  correspond  with  the  intelligence  of  the  respective  ani- 
mals. For  example,  none  of  you  would  regard  the  elephant  a 
lens  intelligent  animal  than  the  sheep,  notwithstanding  the  table 
to  the  contrary. 

The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  brain  weight  has  been  regarded 
by  too  many  as  an  absolute  index  of  the  relative  position  of 
an  animal  in  the  scale  of  intelligence.  The  average  weight  of 
the  adult  male  European  brain  is  49  to  50  ounces,  that  of  the 
adult  female  44  to  45  ounces,  making  the  brain  of  a  man  weigh, 
as  a  rule,  10  per  cent,  more  than  that  of  a  woman.  The  average 
brain  weight  of  the  African,  Malay  and  Mongolian  is  from  one 
to  four  and  a  half  ounces  less  than  that  of  the  Caucasian.  Dr. 
Bernard  Davis  advances  four  interesting  conclusions  that  have 
a  bearing  on  this  point :  1st,  that  the  average  brain  weight  is 
considerably  higher  in  the  civilized  European  than  in  the  savage 
races;  2d,  that  the  range  of  variation  is  much  greater  in  the 
former  than  in  the  latter;  3d,  that  there  is  an  absence,  almost 
complete,  of  specimens  heavier  than  54  ounces  belonging  to  the 
exotic  races;  4th,  that  though  the  male  brains  are  heavier  than 


64  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

female  there  is  not  the  same  amount  of  difference  in  the  average 
brain  between  the  two  sexes  in  the  uncultivated  as  in  the  culti- 
vated people. 

At  birth  the  brain  of  the  infant  weighs  about  ten  ounces.  It 
reaches  the  maximum  size  about  the  eighth  year,  but  keeps  on 
increasing  in  weight  until  the  person  is  about  30  or  40.  You  re- 
member that  Byron's  brain  is  said  to  have  weighed  79  oz., Crom- 
well's 78  oz.;  that  of  Cuvier  64  oz.,  that  of  Agassiz  53.5  oz.,  and 
that  of  Webster  55  oz.  But  in  this  connection  it  must  also  be  re- 
membered that  high-brain  weights  are  oftentimes  found  in  the  in- 
sane. In  fact,  insanity  is  sometimes  caused  by  brain  enlargement. 
In  the  insane  asylum  of  West  Riding,  out  of  375  male  brains  ex- 
amined, thirty  were  found  which  weighed  55  ounces  or  upward. 
Thurnam  reports  one  of  an  epileptic  which  weighed  64 1-2  ounces. 
When  yet  a  boy  I  remember  seeing  a  brain  which  weighed  62 
ounces.  It  was  the  brain  of  an  insane  man  who  had  committed 
suicide  near  our  home  by  hanging  himself.  Dr.  Langdon  Davis 
examined  the  brain  of  a  22-year-old  idiot,  which  weighed  59  1-2 
ounces.  The  heaviest  brain  of  which  we  have  authentic  record  be- 
longed to  an  insane  person.  The  man  from  whom  it  was  taken 
was  a  brick  layer  38  years  old,  who  died  from  pyaemia  in  the  Uni- 
versity College  Hospital  in  1849.  According  to  Obersteiner  963 
grams  is  the  smallest  recorded  weight  of  a  male  brain  compatible 
with  intelligence;  likewise  788  is  the  smallest  weight  of  the  female 
brain  that  has  been  found  to  be  compatible  with  intelligence. 

It  should  also  be  remarked  in  this  connection  that  no  uniform 
method  of  removing  the  brain  from  the  skull  has  been  adopted 
by  the  various  investigators.  Some  will,  in  addition  to  the 
brain  proper,  remove  a  small  portion  of  the  cord,  which,  of 
course,  adds  to  the  total  weight.  Many  brains  cannot  be  con- 
veniently weighed  until  considerable  blood  or  moisture  is  lost. 
Thus  you  see  the  methods  of  comparing  brains  with  reference  to 
their  weights  leave  room  for  improvement  so  far  as  accuracy  is 
concerned.  Brain  weight  can  never  be  set  down  as  a  criterion  of 
intelligence.  A  much  better  basis  for  such  a  judgment  is  found 
in  the  amount  of  brain  surface.  Wealth  of  brain  surface  means, 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS. 


65 


15OO 
Grams 


O  Years 


10  Years 


20  Years     25 


1OOO 
Grams 


5OO 
Grams 


\ 


\/ 


vv 


\ 


FIGURE  10.— The  above  curve  indicates  the  growth  of  the  brain  with  reference  to 
its  absolute  weight  in  both  males  and  females  for  the  first  twenty-five  years. 
The  curve  is  based  upon  the  published  tables  of  Vierordt  in  the  Archiv  Jiir 
Anatomic  und  Physiologic,  Band,  1890.  The  heavy  (upper)  line  indicates  the 
increase  in  weight  of  the  male  brain  from  year  to  year,  and  the  light  (lower) 
lines  shows  the  same  with  reference  to  the  brain  of  females.  The  weights  are 
expressed  in  grams. 
L.  P.— 5 


66 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


of  course,  a  much- wrinkled,  many  fissured  and  very  convoluted 
brain.  Of  two  brains  equal  in  size  and  weight,  the  one  having 
the  more  fissures  and  deeper  convolutions  is  the  more  "intelli- 
gent" brain.  Thus  the  brain  of  the  Hottentot  "Venus,"  when 
examined  by  Gratiolet,  exhibited  very  few  convolutions,  and 
these  were  not  at  all  complicated.  Compare  with  this  the  brain 


FIGURE  11.— Diagram  showing  the  relative  amount  of  brain  surface  exposed  to 
view  and  sunken  between  the  gyri.  The  larger  circle  (A)  represents  the  entire 
braiu  surface ;  the  smaller  circle  (B)  represents  the  portion  sunken  between  the 
gyri  and  hidden  from  view ;  the  narrow  zone  or  area  between  the  two  circum- 
ferences represents  the  portion  exposed  to  view. 

of  a  journalist,  as  pictured  by  Bastian,  and  you  will  find  that 
the  latter  has  uniformly  more  convolutions  which  are  very 
intricate  in  their  nature.  But  when  the  latter  is  in  turn  com- 
pared with  the  brain  of  Gauss,  the  celebrated  mathematician, 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  67 

you  find  that  the  latter  brain  has  not  only  as  many  convo- 
lutions, but  they  are  very  much  deeper  and  much  more  tortu- 
ous, consequently  involving  more  brain  surface — hence  a  brain 
indicative  of  greater  intelligence.  In  the  average  brain  much  of 
the  surface  is  sunken  between  the  convolutions  or  gyri.  In  fact, 
but  little  over  one-third  of  the  actual  surface  of  the  cortex  is  ex- 
posed to  view.  The  average  extent  of  the  entire  surface  of  the 
cerebral  hemispheres,  including  that  which  is  sunken  between  the 
gyri,  as  well  as  that  exposed  to  view,  has  been  found  to  be  2,500 
square  centimeters,  or  about  388'  square  inches.  The  area  of  the 
sunken  portion  is  almost  exactly  twice  that  of  the  portion  ex- 
posed to  view.  It  is  therefore  677  square  centimeters,  or  258 
square  inches.  (See  Fig.  11.) 

One  of  the  most  notable  peculiarities  of  the  human  cerebrum  is 
that  its  two  hemispheres  are  not  equally  or  symmetrically  devel- 
oped. It  is  not  infrequently  the  fact  in  the  case  of  right-handed 
persons  (therefore  "  left-brained  ") ,  that  the  left  hemisphereisnot 
only  more  highly  convoluted  than  the  right,  but  it  is  frequently 
slightly  longer  than  its  fellow,  causing  the  tip  of  the  left  occipital 
lobe  to  project  distinctly  behind  that  of  the  right  side.  In  such 
a  case  the  right  hemisphere  is  rather  flattened  at  the  tip  of  the 
occipital  lobe,  while  the  left  is  sharply  conical  in  its  termination. 
In  a  large  number  of  brains  this  is  plainly  observable,  especially 
in  the  brains  of  women.  I  have  a  brain  lying  on  my  study  table 
now  (the  brain  of  a  woman)  in  which  the  left  hemisphere  extends 
more  than  an  inch  further  back  than  does  the  right.  Doctor 
Boyd,  a  prominent  English  anatomist,  has  also  made  the  claim 
that  the  brain  in  the  left  hemisphere  is  heavier  than  the  right  by 
about  half  an  ounce.  This  is  denied  by  some,  and  would  prove 
nothing  if  it  were  so. 

When,  however,  you  compare  the  brains  of  various  animals 
you  are  soon  convinced  that  the  development  and  expansion 
(and  therefore  convolution)  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  form  a 
good  criterion  of  the  animal's  mental  life  and  intelligence.  If  we 
look  at  the  matter  from  a  broad  and  general  point  of  view,  we 
find  that  the  greatest  importance  must  be  attached  to  the  great 


68  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

convolutional  complexity  in  the  brain  of  man.  With  respect 
to  convolutional  development  man  stands  at  the  head  of  the 
quadrumanous  type  of  animals,  just  as  elephants  stand  at  the 
head  of  the'  herbivorous  type,  and  just  as  the  great  whale  holds 
a  similar  position  with  respect  to  the  carnivorous  type.  Though 
the  bony  cavity  of  the  human  skull,  or  brain  chamber,  is  so 
shaped  that  the  largest  possible  area  is  obtained  for  the  superfi- 
cial gray  matter  of  the  brain,  yet  the  increased  area  thus  gained 
does  not  prove  at  all  sufficient  for  the  needs  of  man's  intellectual 
and  moral  life;  it  has  still  to  be  increased  by  the  occurrence  of 
further  secondary  foldings  in  the  cerebral  convolutions.  Further- 
more, there  is  always  increased  convolutional  complexity  in  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  in  the  higher  as  compared  with  the  lower 
races  of  man.  The  high  degree  of  convolutional  development  at- 
tained in  the  brain  of  man  is  a  matter  of  the  greatest  significance. 

The  fissures  are  then  seemingly  for  the  purpose  of  economiz- 
ing space  because  by  means  of  their  presence  there  can  be  a  con- 
siderable increase  in  the  amount  of  brain  surf  ace  without  increas- 
ing the  size  of  the  head  itself.  It  may  be  interesting  to  know 
that  the  brain  fissures  or  " channels"  are  actually  produced  by 
the  arteries.  The  more  work  the  animal  has  to  do  with  his 
brain  the  more  blood  does  his  brain  require.  The  network  of 
arteries  covering  the  cortex  become  stronger  and  sink  deeper 
producing  more  and  deeper  fissures,  extending,  as  it  were,  the 
brain  system  of  irrigation.  So  you  see,  then,  the  fact  that  "  the 
higher  the  order  of  any  animal's  intelligence,  the  richer  is  its 
brain  in  the  number  of  convolutions"  is  intimately  and  directly 
related  to  the  other  fact  that  the  higher  the  animal's  position  in 
the  scale  of  intelligence  the  greater  is  the  amount  of  arterial 
blood  needed  and  used  by  the  brain. 

The  forms  of  brain  found  in  the  adult  individuals  of  tJie  lower 
animal  species,  e.  g.,  marmoset  (Fig.  12,)  are  very  similar 
indeed  to  the  form  found  in  the  human  embryo  in  certain  early 
stages  of  its  development.  To  sum  up  the  whole  matter  in  the 
form  of  a  general  conclusion,  we  are  led  to  say  that  wealth  of 
bi-ain  surface,  as  made  possible  by  the  development  in  size,  num- 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS. 


69 


her  and  depth  of  the  cerebral  convolutions,  is  the  most  charac- 
teristic feature  of  the  human  brain. 

But  far  more  important  than  the  matter  of  brain  weights,  and 
even  more  significant  than  the  amount  of  brain  surface,  is  the 
question  concerning  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  blood  sup- 
ply already  mentioned  in  another  chapter  of  this  book.  The 
weight  of  the  entire  brain  is  ordinarily  about  one-fortyfifth  of 
the  body,  but  the  quantity  of  blood  used  up  in  the  brain  is  about 
one-eighth  of  that  required  by  the  whole  body.  You  can  readily 
see,  then,  the  importance  of  pure  blood  and  plenty  of  it.  This 


1. 


4. 


FIGURE  12.— 1,  brain  of  a  marmoset ;.  2,  brain  of  a  human  fetus  (5th  month); 
3,  brain  of  a  fox ;  4,  brain  of  a  gibbon. 

leads  me  to  again  allude  to  the  main  points  that  came  up  in  a 
discussion  of  the  influence  of  the  mental  states  upon  bodily  con- 
dition, especially  upon  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  blood  sup- 
ply. First,  anger  and  other  exciting  passions  increase  the  force 
of  the  heart's  action,  sometimes  to  an  alarming  extent.  There 
have  been  instances  of  the  bursting  of  a  blood  vessel  from  a  fit  of 
passion,  e.  g.,  the  recent  death  of  a  well-known  millionaire.  Sec- 
ond, sorrow  and  grief  cause  the  blood  to  move  too  slowly, 
making  the  power  to  resist  disease  very  much  less  than  what  it 
should  be;  third,  good  nature  and  cheerfulness  keep  the  circula- 
tion regular,  and  in  this  way  assist  in  securing  good  health  to 


70  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

the  individual.  You  can  also  see  why  it  is  important  that  due 
heed  be  given  to  the  effects  of  alcohol,  drugs  and  tobacco  upon 
the  blood,  since  the  brain  uses  such  a  large  per  cent,  of  the  entire 
blood  supply.  One  effect  of  alcohol  is  to  make  the  blood  too  thin, 
unfitting  it  for  nourishing  the  body  and  especially  the  brain.  An- 
other is  to  shrink  the  little  blood  corpuscles  so  that  they  cannot 
carry  the  oxygen  necessary  to  purify  the  blood  and  keep  the  body 
properly  warm.  It  makes  the  blood  impure,  inducing  fever  and 
inflammation.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  yellow  fever  and  some 
other  febrile  diseases  are  nearly  always  fatal  to  those  who  drink 
much  liquor.  Kraft-Ebbing,  the  renowned  pathological  special- 
ist, asserts  that  a  most  intimate  relation  obtains  between  alco- 
holism and  insanity — that  all  forms  of  insanity  from  melancholia 
to  imbecility  are  found  in  alcoholism.  Impure  blood  is  the  best 
of  soil  for  the  seeds  of  disease.  With  reference  to  tobacco,  a  very 
eminent  physician  says:  "  Youths  are  far  more  affected  by  the  use 
of  tobacco  than  men  are.  They  accustom  themselves  to  it  more 
slowly,  and  for  a  long  period  it  lessens  their  appetite.  Boys  who 
smoke  weaken  their  muscles,  are  much  less  disposed  to  bodily  ac- 
tivity, and  are  seldom  inclined  to  exercise.  Smoking, then, inter- 
feres with  appetite,  impairs  bodily  activity,  and  in  some  way 
damages  the  circulation  and  the  composition  of  the  blood,  which 
must,  of  course,  affect  the  brain."  All  these  facts  pertaining  to 
the  weight  of  the  brain  mass,  the  extent  of  the  cerebral  surface, 
and  the  influence  of  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  blood  supply, 
manifest  in  a  general  way  the  real  significance  of  the  brain  for  the 
intellectual  activities.  The  deeply  convoluted  and  wrinkled  rind  of 
gray  matter,  which  is  the  covering  of  the  brain,  has  been  shown 
to  be  the  physical  basis  of  man's  highest  and  profoundest  mental 
life. 

When  we  turn  to  experimental  physiology  for  its  deliverances 
we  find  that  it  points  in  no  mistaken  lines  to  the  real  importance 
of  the  different  portions  of  the  encephalic  mass.  If  in  a  frog  we 
sever  the  spinal  cord  from  the  brain  by  making  a  section  below 
the  medulla,  we  find  that  if  the  flank  of  the  frog  be  touched  a 
slight  twitching  of  the  muscles  will  result.  If  one  of  the  hind 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  71 

legs  be  stretched  out  and  severely  pinched  it  will  respond  by 
withdrawing  itself  from  the  irritating  cause.  When  the  irrita- 
tion is  increased  the  foreleg  will  also  be  employed  to  secure  relief, 
and  sometimes  the  legs  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  body,  thus 
showing  it  to  be  a  purposeful  action.  If  you  irritate  this  "  brain- 
less" frog  at  different  portions  of  the  skin  with  acid,  you  find  it 
will  perform  certain  remarkable  defensive  movements  in  its  en- 
deavors to  wipe  away  the  irritant.  Touch  the  knee  with  the 
acid,  it  will  be  rubbed  with  the  back  of  the  foot;  cut  away  this 
foot,  the  stump  will  be  used  ineffectually  until  after  a  pause, 
when  the  unmutilated  foot  will  be  applied  to  the  irritated  spot. 
When  the  skin  over  the  breast  is  made  the  subject  of  irritation  itis 
vigorously  rubbed  with  both  of  the  f  orepaws.  This  series  of  precise 
movements,  manifesting  purpose  and  design,  are  carried  on  by 
the  spinal  cord  of  itself.  These  phenomena  are  not  peculiar  to 
the  frog  alone.  Other  brainless  animals  manifest  similar  move- 
ments. Decapitate  a  salamander  and  pinch  one  of  its  sides;  it 
will  bend  that  side  into  a  concave  shape.  It  is  said  that  Robin, 
on  tickling  the  breast  of  a  criminal  an  hour  after  decapitation, 
saw  the  arm  and  hand  move  directly  toward  the  irritated  spot. 

On  passing  upward  to  the  medulla,  we  find  that  it  is  given 
over  to  certain  special  functions,  particularly  those  which  have  to 
do  with  the  activities  of  the  lowest  animal  life.  These  are  much 
more  complex  and,  as  we  found  above,  of  a  higher  order  than 
those  belonging  to  the  spinal  cord.  The  medulla  is  directly  re- 
lated in  some  way  to  the  action  of  the  heart  and  to  the  blood 
vessels.  It  is  the  "central  organ"  for  breathing,  coughing  and 
sneezing ;  for  swallowing,  hiccoughing  and  vomiting,  as  well  as 
laughing,  sighing,  crying,  sobbing  and  weeping.  The  breathing 
center  in  the  medulla  was  first  located  by  Flourens.  It  has  since 
been  called  the  "vital  knot,"  because  the  least  injury  to  it  will 
prove  fatal  in  that  it  causes  cessation  of  breathing.  That  these 
various  movements  and  activities  are  bound  up  in  one  another  in 
their  relation  to  the  medulla  is  shown  in  ordinary  strangulation, 
however  slight.  Thus,  when  a  dry  cracker  crumb  lodges  in  one's 
"Sunday  throat,"  swallowing,  coughing,  shedding  tears,  and 


72  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

changes  in  the  breathing  and  circulation  inevitably  result.  It  is 
quite  common  to  hear  one  say,  "  I  laughed  till  I  cried."  It  can, 
therefore,  be  said  that  when  we  have  an  animal  in  which  the 
spinal  cord  and  medulla  are  united  and  remain  intact,  though 
severed  from  the  superior  organs,  we  have  a  mechanism  that 
will  execute  movements  of  which  the  spinal  cord  alone  is  incap- 
able. A  frog,  with  its  spinal  cord  and  medulla  will  endeavor  to 
turn  over  when  laid  on  its  back  and  when  placed  in  the  water  it 
will  swim.  A  young  rat,  in  which  the  medulla  and  spinal  cord  are 
intact,  but  severed  from  the  organs  lying  above,  will  squeal  if  its 
legs  are  pinched,  and  it  is  able  to  swallow ;  it  will  also  kick  in  its 
endeavor  to  free  itself. 

We  now  pass  to  another  question  of  exceedingly  great  interest, 
but  one  very  difficult  to  answer,  and  one  which  is  by  no  means 
settled,  though  master  minds  have  struggled  with  the  matter  for 
over  two  centuries.  The  question  is :  What  are  the  functions  of 
the  cerebellum?  There  is  a  uniform  agreement  supporting  the 
conclusion  that  the  cerebellum  is  the  center  that  is  most  inti- 
mately associated  with  the  balancing  of  the  body.  Thus  the 
staggering  of  the  man  who  has  imbibed  too  freely  of  ''Tangle- 
foot" whisky  is  due  to  temporary  inflammation  produced  by 
congestion  of  the  blood  on  the  surface  of  the  cerebellum.  In  the 
disease  known  as  phrenitis,  in  common  vertigo,  or  "blind  stag- 
gers," which  frequently  attacks  the  horse,  veterinarians  always 
open  the  skull  at  a  point  directly  over  the  cerebellum  until  sev- 
eral quarts  of  blood  are  set  free.  We  find,  too,  in  the  frog  hav-. 
ing  the  cerebellum  in  addition  to  the  spinal  cord  and  medulla, 
that  its  locomotion  is  nearly  normal  on  a  level,  but  it  cannot 
climb  up  an  inclined  surface;  it  will  also  croak  when  pinched  on 
the  side  under  the  arms.  In  a  recent  article*  I  published  the  re- 
sults of  an  extended  series  of  observations  made  upon  the  brain 
of  a  cat  whose  cerebellum  was  diseased. 

This  cat  had  suddenly  become  paralyzed  when  three  months 
old.  For  several  days  he  was  disinclined  to  eat,  and  all  attempts 

*  Atrophy  of  the  Cerebellum  in  a  Cat.— Journal  of  Nervous  and  Mental  Diseases, 
October,  1892. 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  73 

at  locomotion  were  accompanied  by  spasmodic  jerkings.  In  the 
act  of  walking,  the  hinder  parts  seemed  to  get  along  considerably 
faster  than  the  fore  limbs,  and  faster  than  he  desired ,  giving  a 
ludicrous  effect.  After  a  time  he  recovered  his  appetite  and  again 
became  cheerful  and  lively  as  usual.  He  continued  to  improve ; 
and  with  the  exception  of  the  permanent  disability  to  the  limbs, 
he  seemed  to  be  as  well  as  ever,  for  his  development  was  not  re- 
tarded, since  he  grew  to  normal  size. 

When  brought  to  the  laboratory  the  cat  was  eleven  months 
old.  While  he  could  walk  and  trot  his  gait  was  zigzag  and  stag- 
gering, since  his  hind  legs  spread  somewhat  laterally  in  locomo- 
tion. Incoordination  of  the  limbs  was  quite  marked;  the  hind- 
legs  were  raised  very  high  and  placed  so  far  forward  as  to 
overstep  the  forelegs  in  walking;  the  movements  of  the  head  and 
neck  were  spasmodic  and  jerky.  An  autopsy  revealed  the  fact 
that  all  portions  of  the  brain  and  spinal  cord  were  in  normal 
condition  except  the  cerebellum.  With  the  aid  of  a  micrometer 
eye-piece  accurate  measurements  were  made  of  the  outer  gray 
cortical  layer.  Over  one  thousand  of  these  measurements  were 
made.  It  was  found  that  the  thickness  of  this  outer  gray  layer 
was  only  about  half  that  which  was  found  in  the  cerebellum  of 
the  normal  cat.  Since  no  other  part  of  the  nervous  system  ex- 
cept the  cerebellum  was  found  to  be  at  all  affected  by  disease, 
and  since  the  cat  manifested  marked  disturbances  in  locomotion, 
it  is  very  evident,  at  least  with  reference  to  this  particular  case, 
that  the  cerebellum  contains  within  its  cortex  the  centers  that 
are  most  immediately  concerned  with  coordination  of  the  limbs, 
balancing  of  the  body,  and  locomotion  itself. 

All  then  that  is  really  known  about  the  functions  of  the  cere- 
bellum might  be  summed  up  in  a  general  way  in  the  words  of 
Bastian,  who  regards  it  as  "  a  supreme  motor  center  for  re-en- 
forcing and  regulating  the  quantitative  and  qualitative  distribu- 
tion of  outgoing  currents  in  voluntary  and  automatic  movements, 
respectively." 


LESSON  VII. 

THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS    (CONTINUED). 

WE  now  come  to  speak  more  particularly  of  the  cerebral  hemi- 
spheres in  their  relation  to  man's  conscious  psychical  life.  The 
importance  of  the  cerebrum  as  the  physical  basis  of  mentaJ 


FIGURE  13.— Showing  localization  of  sensory  and  motor  functions  on  the  lateral 
surface  of  the  monkey's  brain.    (Left  hemisphere.) 

activity  can  scarcely  be  overrated.  In  fact,  we  must  have  somt 
activity  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  in  order  to  make  each  state 
of  consciousness  a  possible  fact.  Unless  stimulations  that  occur 
at  the  periphery  of  the  body,  are  conveyed  in  some  form  to  the 
gray  rind  of  the  cerebrum  giving  rise  to  some  sort  of  neural  pro- 
cess within  it,  no  consciousness  or  "  awareness,''  of  the  stimu^ 
tion  can  possibly  result.  This  same  cerebral  cortex  must  also 
take  the  initiative  in  all  voluntary  motions.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered, therefore,  that  the  physical  basis  of  the  conscious  mental 
activities  in  man  is  the  gray  convoluted  cerebral  cortex. 
(74) 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS. 


75 


Not  all  parts  of  the  cerebral  cortex  respond  to  the  same  sort 
of  excitations  or  give  birth  to  the  same  kind  of  sensations. 
Neither  are  all  localities  in  the  convoluted  cortex  concerned  in 
motor  impulses  of  the  same  group  or  class.  The  cerebral  cortex 
is  therefore  a  very  complex  organ;  or,rather,it  is  morelikeavery 
complicated  keyboard,  the  response  coming  from  those  parts 
that  are  in  direct  relation  to  certain  specific  forms  of  stimulation. 
Or,  as  Prof.  E.  Bering  puts  it,  "The  different  parts  of  the  hemi- 
spheres are  like  a  great  tool  box  with  a  countless  variety  of  tools. 


FIGURE  14.— Motor  and  Sensory  centers  on  the  Lateral  Surface  of  the  Cerebrum. 

Each  single  element  of  the  cerebrum  is  a  particular  tool.  Con- 
sciousness may  be  likened  to  an  artisan  whose  tools  gradually 
become  so  numerous,  so  varied  and  so  specialized  that  he  has  for 
every  minutest  detail  of  his  work  a  tool  which  is  specially  adapted 
to  perform  just  this  precise  kind  of  work  very  easily  and  accu- 
rately. If  he  loses  one  of  his  tools  he  still  possesses  a  thousand 
other  tools  to  do  the  same  work,  though  under  disadvantages 
both  with  reference  to  adaptability  and  the  time  involved. 
Should  he  happen  to  lose  the  use  of  these  thousand  also,  he 


76 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


might  retain  hundreds  with  which  to  do  the  work  still,  but  under 
greatly  increased  difficulty.  He  must  needs  have  lost  a  very 
large  number  of  his  tools  if  certain  actions  become  absolutely 
impossible."  ' 

We  know, for  example,  that  a  current  passing  to  theback  part 
of  the  brain  gives  rise  to  sensations  of  vision.  It  makes  but 
little  difference  whether  this  neural  current  comes  through  the 
eye  or  not,  for  you  know  that  even  a  slight  mechanical  jar  or 
concussion  at  the  back  of  the  head  is  sufficient  to  cause  one  to 


FIGURE  15.— Motor  and  sensory  centers  on  the  mesial  (inner)  surface  of 
the  cerebrum. 

"  see  stars  "  and  even  comets  and  other  luminaries.  If  the  neural 
excitation  occurs  at  some  other  portion  of  the  cortical  surf  ace  we 
have  some  other  sensation  as  a  result.  Despite  all  conflicting 
opinions  it  is  now  a  settled  fact  that  a  science  of  cerebral  local- 
ization is  possible.  All  of  the  achievements  in  this  line  of  re 
search  have  been  made  within  the  last  twenty  years,  and  the 
most  noteworthy  ones  even  more  recently.  The  most  prominent 
investigators  in  this  field  of  research  are  Munk,  Ferrier,  Exner, 
Horsley,  Schafer,  Goltz,  Fritsch  and  Hitzig. 


TEE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  77 

The  first  attempt  in  this  direction  was  made  by  Gall,  who 
founded  the  so-called  "  Science  of  Phrenology."  He  started  with 
the  presupposition  that  the  skull,  being  the  case  containing  the 
brain,  ought  show  the  brain  formation  itself.  Such  an  assump- 
tion, while  partially  true,  is  in  the  main  erroneous,  since  it  over- 
looks the  fact  that  the  skulls  of  different  individuals,  or  the  same 
skull  at  different  portions,  vary  greatly  in  thickness.  He  also 
lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  the  skull  bones  can  and  do  sometimes 
thicken  both  ways.  A  prominent  "bump,"  like  that  of  "Vanity," 
"Ambition,"  or  "  Memory  for  Words,"  may  really  be  found  on  the 
cranium  of  a  person  entirely  devoid  of  the  qualities  suggested. 
The  errors  of  phrenology  are  now  quite  generally  admitted,  and 
so  bald  are  these  mistakes  that  in  scientific  circles  it  is  entirely 
abandoned,  because  as  a  "system"  or  "science"  it  is  fallacious 
in  every  respect.  The  remarks  of  the  southern  colored  preacher, 
with  reference  to  the  "  efficacy  "  of  phrenology,  is  certainly  to  the 
point;  if  his  thought  is  not  clothed  in  the  most  elegant  language, 
his  deductions  are  none  the  less  pertinent— "Brudderw  and 
sisters!  Do  I  heah  you'n's  talk  about  phrenology?  Don't  you 
know  dat  you  can't  tell  how  many  hams  dey  is  in  de  smokehouse 
by  feeling  ob  de  roof?"  Certain  it  is  that,  altogether  defective 
in  its  psychological  analysis,  preeminently  unsatisfactory  in  its 
localizations,  unreliable  in  its  methods,  and  inconclusive  in  its 
results,  there  is  nothing  in  phrenology  that  merits  the  respectful 
attention  of  the  real  student. 

It  is  a  perfectly  well-established  fact  that  the  so-called  "cen- 
tral" convolution  (situated  on  either  side  of  the  fissure  of  Ro- 
lando, see  Fig.  6)  forms  the  region  from  which  nearly  all  the 
motor  impulses  pass  out  from  the  cerebral  cortex.  All  authori- 
ties agree  that  the  motor  regions  do  lie  around  this  fissure  of 
Rolando.  So  certain  is  this  that  it  is  called  the  "  motor  zone." 
More  plain  and  clear  than  a  detailed  description  are  the  accom- 
panying figures,  which  exhibit  the  arrangement  of  the  specific 
centers,  more  especially  those  in  the  motor  zone  on  the  surface 
of  the  monkey's,  as  well  as  the  human,  cerebrum.  (Figs.  13, 
14  and  15.) 


78  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  and  instructive  truths  bearing  upon 
the  question  of  localization  of  cerebral  function  is  based  upon  evi- 
dence supplied  by  the  disease  known  as  aphasia.  Aphasia  is  a  gen- 
eral name  given  to  the  disease  which  involvesa  partial  or  complete 
loss  of  the  faculty  of  intelligent  speech.  It  is  not  caused  by  any 
structural  impairment  of  the  vocal  organs,  but  by  some  lesion  in  the 
cortex.  The  cortical  area  generally  affected  in  this  pathological 
state  is  the  posterior  third  of  the  third  frontal  (or  Broca's)  con- 
volution. (See  "  Speech  "  center,  Fig.  14.)  Aphasia  is  neither 
the  loss  of  the  voice  nor  paralysis  of  the  tongue  or  lips.  The  phe- 
nomena of  this  disease  are  exceedingly  varied.  In  all  true  apha- 
sia the  connection  between  ideas  and  articulate  language  is  inter- 
rupted within  the  cortical  areas  of  the  cerebrum  itself.  Speech 
processes  in  the  cerebral  cortex  are  both  sensory  and  motor.  By 
means  of  the  sensory,  language  is  received;  by  means  of  the  mo- 
tor processes,  it  is  uttered.  We  have,  then,  both  sensory  and 
motor  aphasia.  In  the  aphasic  state,  though  the  mental  condi- 
tion may  be  more  or  less  impaired,  it  is  never  so  to  such  an  ex- 
tent as  to  prevent  the  formation  of  ideas.  The  difficulty  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  patient  cannot  recollect  the  appropriate  words 
or  their  meaning,  and  is  thus  unable  to  give  his  thoughts  the 
proper  expression.  In  other  words,  he  has  lost  the  power  of 
coordinating  and  arranging  the  elements  of  a  sentence  in  a 
proper  manner  for  the  purposes  of  spoken  or  written  language. 
The  patient  is  always  cognizant  of  his  errors  in  utterance.  To 
illustrate :  A  case  occurred  recently  in  one  of  the  New  York  City 
hospitals.  The  person  afflicted  was  a  man  of  more  than  ordi- 
nary intelligence.  He  desired  a  knife  with  which  to  eat  his  food. 
He  had  a  clear  idea  of  what  he  wanted ;  he  wanted  a  knife.  But, 
mark  you,  each  time  he  attempted  to  say  " knife"  the  words 
"bushel  of  wheat  "would  come  unbidden  from  his  lips.  You  see 
that,  notwithstanding  his  clear  idea  of  the  object  desired,  he 
could  not  bring  about  the  appropriate  processes  of  innervation 
by  means  of  which  he  might  utter  the  proper  word. 

This  is  quite  similar  to  another  case,  that  of  a  young  lady  of 
twenty-two,  who  suddenly  became  unconscious  while  straining  to 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  79 

lift  a  heavy  load.  When  consciousness  returned  she  showed  no 
signs  of  paralysis,  but  it  was  with  difficulty  that  she  found  words 
with  which  to  speak.  She  would  confound  or  mutilate  the  com- 
monest names— e.  g.,  she  would  say  "butter"  instead  of  "doc- 
tor." Not  understanding  a  single  word  spoken  to  her,  she  was  at 
first  taken  to  be  deaf,  but  it  was  soon  discovered  tha,t  she  heard 
the  knock  at  the  door,  the  tick  of  the  watch,  or  the  hum  of  a  bee 
as  distinctly  and  clearly  as  ever  before,  and  she  could  also  distin- 
guish the  pitch  and  quality  of  tones. 

Quite  recently,  while  in  Germany,  my  attention  was  called  to 
a  very  interesting  case  of  asphasia  in  one  of  the  hospitals  of  Ber- 
lin. A  German  army  officer  had  been  thrown  from  his  horse  in 
one  of  the  military  maneuvers  which  took  place  in  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Sedan.  In  the  fall  he 
received,  his  head  struck  the  hard  concrete  pavement;  at  first  he 
was  unconscious.  Soon  after  his  return  to  consciousness  it  was 
discovered  that  he  could  not  articulate  a  single  word.  Every  at- 
tempt at  utterance  resulted  in  dismal  failure.  Nothing  came  of 
his  painful  endeavors  save  a  series  of  unintelligible  and  incongru- 
ous sounds.  After  five  weeks  an  examination  of  the  brain  itself 
was  determined  upon,  for  after  a  careful  diagnosis  the  trouble 
could  be  assigned  to  no  other  cause  than  to  an  injury  to  the  speech 
center  itself.  The  operation  of  trephining  took  place.  When  a 
small  portion  of  bone  was  removed,  a  little  hardened  clot  of 
blood  was  found  between  the  dura  mater  and  the  skull  bone  itself 
directly  over  the  speech  center,  as  indicated  in  the  figure  on  page 
75.  This  blood  clot  was  carefully  removed  by  washing  with  a 
jet  of  warm  distilled  water.  Three  weeks  after  the  operation  was 
performed,  the  patient  had  fully  regained  his  ability  to  speak  and 
write  correctly. 

A  still  more  interesting  case  is  that  reported  by  Doctors  Carson 
and  Bremer,  of  St.  Louis.  The  patient  is  a  healthy  and  well-built 
man  of  about  twenty-one  years.  Two  weeks  previous  to  the 
doctor's  visit  he  went  to  a  wedding,  became  intoxicated,  and  on 
his  way  home  fell  between  the  joists  of  a  new  building.  This  was 
his  statement  subsequent  to  his  recovery  after  the  operation. 


80  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

He  went  home  and  was  found  asleep  in  the  kitchen  of  his  parent's 
house  the  following  morning.  Except  what  appeared  to  be  the 
effects  of  the  liquor  he  seemed  to  be  in  his  usual  health.  In  fact, 
nothing  was  nientioned  by  him  with  reference  to  his  fall.  Being 
out  of  work,  he  stayed  at  home  and  rarely  left  the  house,  com- 
plaining off  and  on  of  a  dull  headache  on  the  left  side  of  the  fore- 
head, which  became  more  violent  in  the  afternoon.  After  about 
one  week  he  began  to  stroll  about  his  home.  While  walking  on  the 
street  about  one  block  from  the  house  he  suddenly  became  un- 
conscious and  fell.  This  unconsciousness  did  not  last  long,  how- 
ever, and  he  was  assisted  home  by  a  person  who  was  near  at  the 
time.  Soon  after,  it  was  discovered  by  his  family  that  he  had  some 
difficulty  in  speaking.  He  now  for  the  first  time  intimated  to  his 
family  that  he  met  with  an  accident  on  the  night  of  the  wedding. 

There  was  no  trace  of  any  injury  to  his  head.  He  understood 
every  word  that  was  spoken  to  him,  every  question  that  was 
asked.  Unfortunately,  although  not  entirely  illiterate,  the  pa- 
tient was  not  possessed  of  sufficient  education  to  render  very 
profitable  the  examination  with  a  view  to  discovering  the  par- 
ticular form  of  aphasia.  Only  the  most  elementary  questions 
could  be  asked  of  him,  the  scope  of  his  intellect  being  limited.  In 
order  to  test  his  mental  caliber  and  ascertain  the  nature  of  the 
trouble  in  his  speech  a  number  of  questions  were  asked.  The 
principal  ones  were : 

Do  you  know  what  this  is  (showing  him  a  glass)  ? 

Ans.  Zer. 

Q.  Is  it  a  glass  ? 

Ans.  Yes. 

When  a  pitcher  is  shown  him  he  calls  it  a  "tipper;"  a  pen 
he  calls  "  riglah ; "  a  spittoon  "  sempen,"  a  hat  "  sem." 

Q.  Do  you  call  this  (the  hat)  "  sem  ?  " 

Ans.  No. 

Q.  Is  it  a  hat? 

Ans.  Yes. 

Q.  What  is  this  (showing  him  a  match)? 

Ans.  "Ses." 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  81 

In  order  to  demonstrate  that  he  knows  what  it  is,  he  makes 
the  movement  of  striking  a  match.  A  book  he  calls  "pok," 
handkerchief,  "sempence;"  suspender  also  "sempence;"  for 
pocket-knife  he  gives  the  correct  name;  but  when  shown  a  bunch 
of  keys,  he  also  says  "pocket  knife."  After  this  he  calls  every- 
thing that  is  shown  him  " pocket;  "  for  example,  a  watch  and 
a  button. 

When  requested  to  repeat  a  word  spoken  to  him  he  is  un- 
able to  do  so.  He  understands  perfectly  what  he  reads.  He 
is  handed  a  newspaper  with  an  advertisement  of  an  entertain- 
ment in  the  St.  Louis  Exposition  Building.  By  putting  a  great 
variety  of  questions,  some  of  them  misleading,  one  becomes 
aware  that  he  is  familiar  with  the  location  of  the  building  and 
the  purposes  for  which  it  is  built.  He  is  asked  to  read  an  adver- 
tisement of  a  boxing  match,  the  name  of  the  prize  fighter  is 
pointed  out  to  him  and  the  inquiry  is  made,  What  is  he?  Is  he 
a  preacher?  This  causes  him  to  laugh.  In  short,  there  is  no 
flaw  in  his  perceptive  and  reasoning  powers  as  far  as  can  be  as- 
certained by  a  necessarily  limited  conversation,  and  as  far  as 
short  acquaintance  will  allow.  On  being  told  to  write,  he 
holds  the  pen  in  an  awkward  manner  and  drops  it  repeatedly. 
He  never  has  been  much  of  a  penman,  but  has  been  able  to  write 
simple  letters.  It  is  now  utterly  impossible  for  him  to  express 
his  thoughts  in  writing,  and  even  the  most  commonplace  and 
everyday  expressions,  when  dictated,  he  fails  to  fix  by  letters. 

An  operation  was  agreed  upon,  a  portion  of  the  bone  was  tre- 
phined and  when  the  dura  mater  was  exposed  it  presented  a  dark 
cloudy  appearance  with  all  evidence  of  pulsation  wanting.  Upon 
raising  the  dura,  a  stream  of  dark,  thick  blood  forced  itself 
through  the  opening.  With  a  dull-edged  curette  the  greater  part 
of  the  clot  was  removed  and  smaller  portions  subsequently  taken 
away  by  means  of  saturation  with  a  very  fine  sponge.  The  ex- 
tent of  this  blood  clot  is  outlined  in  the  accompanying  figure. 
(See  next  page.)  The  patient  soon  Returned  to  consciousness, 
apparently  none  the  worse  for  the  operation.  On  the  next  day 
after  the  operation  the  patient  was  stupid  and  unable  to  speak, 

L.P.-6 


82 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


his  condition  being  that  of  complete  motor-aphasia.  On  the 
second  day  after  the  operation,  in  all  efforts  to  speak,  he  prefixed 
"  shay  "  to  words.  He  could,  however,  answer  "  yes  "  and  "  no  " 
correctly,  */  yes  "  having  the  "  sh  "  sound  very  marked.  A  watch 
was  pronounced  "  swat,"  keys  "shkeys,"  half-dollar  "  shalf-dol- 
lar."  On  the  third  day,  in  answer  to  questions,  he  said  that  he 
"felt  well"  and  that  he  "liked  the  hospital."  He  could  speak 
words  without  the  sibilant  sound.  On  the  fourth  day  all  words 
were  spoken  correctly,  and  reply  made  to  all  questions  with  clear 


FIGURE  16. 

answers.  Three  months  after  the  operation  finds  the  patient 
hard  at  his  daily  tasks  in  a  brickyard.  He  is  now  in  his  usual 
health,  with  all  his  faculties  intact  and  a  steady  worker. 

Dr.  Laplace,  of  Philadelphia,  reports  in  one  of  the  recent  jour- 
nals* a  singular  aphasic  case  of  surpassing  interest.  The  person, 
in  this  instance,  suffered  from  a  gun-shot  wound  in  the  brain, 
causing  a  form  of  aphasia,  in  which  the  loss  of  names  was  the 
striking  feature.  The  report  reads  something  as  follows :  — 

*  Journal  of  Nervous  and  Mental  Diseases,  March,  1893. 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  83 

August  4, 1892,  Lizzie  Albert,  aged  nineteen,  received  a  gun- 
shot wound  in  the  forehead  at  the  apex  of  the  glabella ;  there 
was  a  fracture  of  the  skull,  and  penetration  of  the  bullet,  accord- 
ing to  the  testimony  of  the  physician  who  saw  her  immediately 
after  the  accident.  She  became  unconscious  and  remained  so 
during  three  weeks.  Meanwhile  several  splinters  of  bone  were 
removed  from  the  seat  of  the  penetration  of  the  bullet.  The 
wound  gradually  healed,  leaving  a  slight  depression.  As  she 
recovered  consciousness,  she  complained  of  a  severe  pain,  con- 
stant and  almost  unbearable,  the  seat  of  which  was  in  the  left 
occipital  region,  keeping  her  mind  always  fixed  upon  that  point; 
she  suffered  no  pain  otherwise  about  the  cranium.  The  patient  is 
a  strong  young  woman.  As  a  result  of  the  injury  most  interest- 
ing intellectual  symptoms  occurred,  her  physical  condition,  how- 
ever, remaining  entirely  unimpaired.  When  complaining  of  the 
pain  at  the  back  of  her  head,  she  says  that  she  "  sees  it ;  "  when 
asked  what?  she  answers  "Yes."  If  asked  "What  hurts?" 
she  says  "It  hurts."  When  asked  if  the  bullet  hurts,  she 
says  "Yes." 

It  seems  that  the  various  organs  of  sense  refer  their  impres- 
sion to  the  same  centers.  For  instance,  if  asked  if  she  hears  a 
particular  sound,  such  as  a  tuning  fork,  she  will  answer,  "  Yes ;  I 
see  it."  If  given  anything  to  take  and  asked  whether  she  likes  it, 
she  answers,  "  Yes,  I  see  it."  Likewise  if  anything  is  given  her  to 
smell,  she  says  she  also  "  sees  "  the  sensation  of  smell.  It  seems  to 
her  an  impossibility  to  repeat  a  word  spoken  to  her,  though  she 
fully  understands  everything.  ID  her  conversation  she  uses  no 
names  of  persons  or  things,  but  knows  every  person  and  recog- 
nizes everything.  For  instance,  if  shown  a  hat  and  asked  what 
that  is,  fehe  will  say, "  It  is  yes ;"  but  asked  the  name  of  it  she  will 
say,  "I  do  not  know."  If  asked, "Is  this  a  book?"  she  will  say, 
"No."  "Is  it  a  hat?  "  she  will  say  "Yes."  Should  we  write  on 
paper  the  word  cap,  in  presenting  her  the  hat,  she  will  say, "  That 
is  not  it."  If  changing  the  word  slightly  we  make  it  "coat," 
showing  her  the  hat,  she  will  say,  "  That  is  not  it."  If,  changing 
the  word  slightly  and  writing  the  word  hat,  and  asked  whether 


84  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

that  was  it,  she  will  say,  "Yes."  If  asked  her  name,  she  will 
answer,  "I  do  not  know."  If  asked  whether  her  name  is  Katie, 
she  will  say  "  No."  If  asked  whether  it  is  Lizzie,  she  will  answer 
"Yes."  Asking  her  to  write  her  name,  although  she  says  she 
does  not  know  her  name,  she  will  write  it  correctly — Lizzie 
Albert.  If  asked  whether  that  is  her  name,  she  will  say,  "  Yes." 
If  asked  what  her  name  is, "  I  do  not  know,"  "  I  cannot  tell  you." 
Should  I  write  her  name,  misspelling  it  in  any  manner,  she  will 
say  immediately,  "That  is  wrong."  If  asked,  "What  is  wrong?" 
she  will  point  out  the  letter  in  the  word  which  makes  it  mis- 
spelled, and  until  the  name  is  properly  spelled  she  will  insist  on 
its  being  wrong. 

Her  judgment  seems  to  be  perfectly  clear;  that  is,  she  says  or 
does  nothing  which  would  in  the  least  compromise  the  condition 
of  her  intelligence.  There  seems,  however,  to  be  a  destruction  of 
such  fibers  as  lead  to  those  portions  of  the  frontal  lobe  as  consti- 
tute the  center  of  memory  for  names  of  persons  and  things. 

Another  disorder  very  similar  to  aphasia  is  that  known  as 
agraphia—the  loss  of  the  power  to  write.  Such  persons  can 
speak  correctly,  can  read  writing  and  understand  it  clearly, 
but  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  use  the  pen  at  all,  or,  in  partial 
cases  of  agraphia,  many  errors  are  made.  I  happen  to  be 
acquainted  with  a  well-educated  woman  living  in  Cleveland  who 
is  partially  agraphic.  With  two  exceptions  she  can  make  every 
letter  with  facility;  indeed,  she  writes  a  very  legible  hand.  But 
the  two  letters— k  and  r,  which,  by  the  way,  occur  in  her  own 
name,  present  insuperable  difficulties.  Try  hard  as  she  may  she 
cannot  possibly  write  these  two  letters.  She  knows  exactly  what 
letters  she  desires  to  make  and  how  they  ought  to  be  made ;  she 
knows  just  what  movement  of  the  fingers  is  required  in  each  case, 
but  she  cannot  bring  about  the  proper  movements  themselves. 
There  is  no  paralysis  of  the  fingers  or  hand,  she  simply  finds  it 
impossible  to  bring  to  pass  those  central  processes  of  innerva- 
tion  that  are  necessary  in  the  formation  of  these  two  letters. 
In  writing  her  own  name  she  makes  instead  of  the  k  and  r  two 
characters  which  are  more  like  some  of  the  forms  included  in  the 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  85 

Chinese  alphabet  than  they  are  like  the  letters  she  endeavors  so 
hard  to  make. 

There  are  some  cases  recorded  in  which  highly  cultivated  per- 
sons are  unable  to  make  a  single  letter  with  a  pen.  Others  will 
arrange  the  letters  improperly,  making  a  meaningless  jumble,  in- 
stead of  words  clear  in  their  meaning.  The  following  interesting 
case  is  recorded  by  Dr.  Jackson : 

"An  elderly,  healthy-looking  woman  suddenly  became  ill  five 
weeks  before  admission  to  the  hospital.  She  lost  the  entire 
power  of  speech  for  a  week,  and  was  also  paralyzed  on  the  right 
side.  When  examined  there  was  no  apparent  hemiplegia,  but  she 
complained  of  weakness  in  the  right  side.  She  could  then  talk 
but  made  mistakes.  For  instance,  when  I  was  trying  her  sense 
of  smell,  which  was  very  defective  since  the  paralysis,  she  said  in 
answer  to  a  question,  « I  can't  say  it  so  much,'  meaning  she  could 
not  smell  so  well.  She  frequently  made  mistakes  in  spelling  and 
called  her  children  by  wrong  names.  This  was  never  very  evident 
when  she  came  to  the  hospital,  and  might  have  easily  been  over- 
looked, but  her  friends  complained  much  of  it.  She  seemed  very 
intelligent.  Her  power  of  expression  by  writing,  however,  was 
very  bad,  although  her  penmanship  was  pretty  good,  consider- 
ing that  she  wrote  with  her  weakened  right  hand.  She  wrote  the 
following  at  the  hospital.  I  first  asked  her  to  write  her  name.  I 
do  not  like,  for  obvious  reasons,  to  give  her  real  name  for  com- 
parison: it  had  not,  however,  the  slightest  resemblance  to  the 
following  in  sound  or  spelling : 

*  Sunnil  Siclaa  Satreni.' 

When  I  asked  her  to  write  her  address,  she  wrote — 
1  Sunese  nut  ts  mer  tinn-lain.' 

Thinking  she  might  have  been  nervous  when  she  wrote  at  the 
hospital,  she  was  asked  to  bring  something  she  had  written  at 
home.  She  did  so,  but  the  specimen  was  not  the  least  bit  better 
than  what  she  had  previously  given.  It  is  a  perfectly  meaning- 


86  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

less  assemblage  of  letters,  notable  only  for  the  frequent  repeti- 
tion of  small  groups  of  them  in  a  fashion  which  is  frequently  the 
case  in  agraphic  persons.  The  center  immediately  concerned  in 
these  agraphic  disorders  is  quite  definitely  located,  being,  of 
course  (in  all  right-handed  persons),  on  the  left  side  of  the  brain, 
and  within  the  finger,  thumb  and  wrist  region  indicated  in  the 
figure.  (See  Fig.  14.)  In  case  this  center  when  diseased  does 
not  get  well  the  patient  usually  educates  his  right  hemisphere, 
j.  e.,  learns  to  write  with  his  left  hand." 

In  the  same  way  that  the  understanding  for  spoken  and  writ- 
ten words  can  be  lost  to  the  patient,  so  can  the  power  of  under- 
standing and  comprehending  figures.  A  case  has  been  recorded 
of  an  accountant  who  was  perfectly  a,ble  to  read  the  number  766 
a  digit  at  a  time,  but  had  no  comprehension  of  the  value  of  a 
group  of  these  figures.  In  all  cases  of  aphasia  the  patient  is 
somewhat  in  the  position  of  the  intelligent  animal  who  hears 
well  enough  the  language  addressed  to  him,  but  cannot  make  re- 
ply or  fully  understand  its  deepest  meaning.  Or  perhaps  a  better 
analogy  would  be  the  case  of  the  Irishman  who,  when  looking  in 
the  window  of  a  tea  shop  at  an  advertisement  with  its  array  of 
Chinese  characters,  being  asked  if  he  could  read  these  arbitrary 
signs,  replied  that  he  could  not  read  such  "spalpeen"  characters, 
but  that  he  could  play  them  on  his  flute. 

The  classical  case  of  the  patient  Le  Long,  recorded  by  Broca, 
serves  well  to  illustrate  the  condition  in  incomplete  aphasia. 
"  Le  Long  had  command  of  only  five  words  which  he  would  add 
by  way  of  supplement  to  the  expressive  gestures  he  usually  em- 
ployed ;  they  were  oui,  non,  tois  (for  trois),  toujours,  and  Le  Lo 
(for  Le  Long),  three  complete  words  accordingly,  and  two  mu- 
tilated ones.  With  his  oui  he  expressed  affirmation,  with  72012 
negation;  with  tois  he  expressed  numerical  concepts  of  all  de- 
grees, being  able  to  indicate  by  a  dextrous  employment  of  his 
fingers  the  numbers  he  had  in  mind;  with  Le  Lo  he  denoted  him- 
self;  toujours  he  used  when  he  was  unable  to  express  his  thoughts 
by  aid  of  the  other  words  at  his  command.  Le  Long  pronounced 
the  r  in  toujours  correctly,  but  omitted  it  in  trois,  as  children  do 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  87 

that  have  not  yet  overcome  the  difficulty  of  uniting  the  r  with 
the  preceding  tfs;  he  had  lost  beyond  recall  this  knack  of  articu- 
lation. The  nasal  sound  which  he  correctly  articulated  in  Don  he 
could  not  give  to  the  last  letters  of  his  own  name." 

The  remarkable  fact  that  in  the  function  of  speech  the  left 
hemisphere  is  more  directly  concerned  than  the  right,  is  now  well 
established.  Seguin  found  from  a  collection  of  two  hundred  and 
sixty  reports  of  cases  of  this  type,  that  the  number  of  instances 
in  which  aphasia  arises  from  lesion  on  the  left  side,  stands  in 
proportion  to  the  number  of  those  in  which  impairment  occurs  on 
tne  right  side,  as  14.3 : 1;  with  reference  to  which  it  must  be  re- 
marked that— as  has  been  shown  by  other  calculations  —  no  de- 
ception is  here  caused  by  the  possible  circumstance  that  in  gen- 
eral more  injuries  occur  on  the  left  side  than  on  the  right.  As 
Exuer  relates :  "  In  this  connection  a  case  reported  by  Schwarzis 
of  interest.  In  a  well-developed  three-year  old  girl,  during  con- 
valescence from  measles,  speechlessness  with  partial  paralysis 
of  the  right  arm  suddenly  set  in.  The  lesion  accordingly  lay  in 
the  left  hemisphere.  The  condition  of  the  patient  improved,  yet 
the  girl  had  to  learn  to  talk  again  from  the  very  beginning,  and 
in  so  doing  acted  like  the  normal  child  that  is  learning  to  speak." 

The  analogy  is  still  further  applicable.  It  appears  that  so- 
called  left-handed  individuals,  who,  as  contrasted  with  the  ma- 
jority of  men,  have  trained  their  right  and  not  their  left  hem- 
ispheres to  perform  mechanical  work,  also  employ  their  right 
hemispheres  in  speech.  Pye  Smith,  Jackson,  and  John  Ogle, 
Mongie,  Russel,  and  William  Ogle  have  observed  cases  that  ap- 
pear to  substantiate  this.  Left-handed  people  had  become 
aphasic  through  lesions  on  the  right  side  of  the  brain,  and  a 
fact  which  proves  more  — in  a  collection  which  William  Ogle 
made  of  one  hundred  cases  of  aphasia,  there  were  three  left- 
handed  men,  and  in  the  case  of  each  of  these,  the  lesion  affected 
the  right  hemisphere." 

The  center  of  hearing  lies  in  the  temporal  lobes.  We  know  this 
because  artificial  stimulation  of  these  portions  of  the  cerebral 
cortex  causes  hallucinations  of  hearing.  The  "  roaring  '  in  the 


88  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ears  which  so  frequently  follows  an  overdose  of  quinine  may  also 
be  instanced  in  this  connection.  In  post  mortem  examinations 
the  temporal  lobes  of  deaf  patients  are  generally  found  to  be  in 
an  atrophied  condition.  Seppili  reported  a  few  months  ago  two 
interesting  cases  in  this  connection.  The  first  was  that  of  an 
autopsy  on  a  deaf  mute,  a  wound  of  long  standing  being  ob- 
served in  both  temporal  lobes.  The  second  was  the  case  of  a  left- 
handed  person,  whose  left  temporal  lobe  showed  an  old  wound, 
no  difficulty  in  hearing  or  speech  having  been  experienced.  From 
this  and  analogous  cases  Seppili  concludes  that  in  a  left-handed 
person  the  auditive  center  of  language  is  situated  within  the 
right  hemisphere.  His  results  form  an  interesting  contribution 
with  reference  to  the  well-established  principle  that  right-handed 
persons  are  left-brained  (and  vice  versa),  even  with  reference  to 
such  functions  as  speech  and  hearing,  of  which  right  and  left 
handedness  cannot  be  directly  predicated. 

The  visual  center  in  the  human  brain  is  in  the  occipital  lobes. 
The  most  interesting  pathological  case  in  support  of  this  view  is 
that  of  the  blind  deaf-mute,  Laura  Bridgeman,  the  structure  of 
whose  brain  has  been  studied  with  such  painstaking  thorough- 
ness by  Professor  H.  H.  Donaldson.*  From  a  paper  read  by  Dr. 
Donaldson  before  the  Congress  in  Experimental  Psychology 
which  met  in  London,  August  1892,  we  make  the  folio  wing  excerpt : 

"  Laura  Bridgeman  was  born  in  1829.  She  was  a  normal  child 
and  her  development  was  undisturbed  up  to  the  end  of  her  second 
year.  At  this  age  she  suffered  from  an  attack  of  scarlet  fever 
which  was  very  severe  and  from  which  the  convalescence  was 
tedious.  It  was  then  found  that  her  senses  of  taste  and  smell 
had  been  much  blunted,  and  that  hearing  had  been  entirely  de- 
stroyed. Vision  in  the  left  eye  had  been  completely  lost,  but  was 
retained  in  the  right  to  a  very  slight  extent.  In  her  eighth  year 
this  remnant  of  vision  was  also  lost.  It  was  at  this  time  that 
Dr.  Howe  undertook  to  educate  her  through  her  dermal  senses 
alone. 

The  remarkable  results  of  his  undertaking  have  now  become 

*  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  Ill,  No.  3;  Vol.  IV,  Nos.  2  and  4. 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  89 

classic,  not  only  because  it  required  first-rate  qualities  in  the 
teacher,  and  also  it  was  the  first  time  that  an  attempt  had  been 
successfully  made  to  give  an  adequate  means  of  expression  to 
one  thus  defective.  Laura  died  at  the  Perkins'  Institute  for  the 
Blind  at  Boston  in  1889,  being  in  the  sixtieth  year  of  her  age, 
and  still  mentally  vigorous.  Among  other  things  the  anatomi- 
cal study  of  the  brain  revealed  the  following  facts : 

"The  thickness  of  the  cortex  was  determined  by  the  examina- 
tion of  fourteen  localities  in  each  hemisphere.  From  these  ob- 
servations an  average  thickness  for  the  cortex  was  deduced,  and 
this  was  compared  with  an  average  similarly  obtained  from  a 
number  of  normal  brains.  The  figure  of  the  average  thickness 
of  the  cortex  of  the  Bridgeman  brain  was  2.62  mm.,  that  for  the 
normal  brains  2.91  mm.  The  Bridgeman  brain  was  therefore 
thinner  by  0.3  mm.,  or  about  11%.  In  this  connection  it  is  inter- 
esting to  notice  that  those  parts  of  the  cortex  which,  according 
to  the  current  view,  were  to  be  associated  with  the  defective  sense 
organs,  were  also  particularly  thin.  The  cause  of  this  thinness 
was  found  to  be  due,  at  least  in  part,  to  the  small  size  of  the 
nerve  cells  there  present.  Not  only  were  the  large  and  medium 
sized  nerve  cells  smaller,  but  the  impression  made  on  the  ob- 
server was  that  they  were  also  less  numerous  than  in  the  normal 
cortex. 

"  Suggestive  also  was  the  fact  that  the  cortex  in  the  right 
occipital  region,  associated  as  it  must  have  been  with  the  left 
eye  (the  eye  in  which  vision  was  earliest  abolished),  was  much  the 
thinner.  This  observation  suggested  that  the  case  might  be 
used  to  determine  the  extent  of  the  visual  cortex  in  man.  It 
was  assumed  that  in  this  case  the  earlier  loss  of  vision  in  the 
left  eye  had  been  the  cause  of  the  excess  of  thinning  on  the 
right  side  and  that  the  extent  of  this  thin  area  would  repre- 
sent that  portion  of  the  cortex  directly  influenced  by  the  optic 
radiation." 

The  researches  in  histology  show  clearly  that  in  higher  ani- 
mals, more  particularly  in  man,  the  optic  nerve  contains  one 
system  of  fibers  which  cross  over  to  the  opposite  side  and  one 


90  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

system  which  remains  uncrossed.  The  relation  is  peculiar,  how- 
ever, in  that  the  fibers  from  the  left  half  of  each  retina  go  to  the 
left  hemisphere,  while  those  of  the  right  halves  of  the  retinas  go  to 
the  right  hemisphere.  The  retina  of  each  eye  in  the  case  of  man 
appears  therefore  to  be  represented  on  the  cortical  surface  of 
both  hemispheres  of  the  brain. 

With  reference  to  a  cortical  center  for  the  sense  of  smell  it  can 
be  said  that  we  have  anatomical  evidence  of  considerable  value. 
The  intimate  connection  of  the  olfactory  tract  with  the  tip  of 
the  temporal  lobe  certainly  furnishes  strong  grounds  for  suppos- 
ing a  functional  connection  between  that  region  and  the  sense  of 
smell.  The  experiments  of  Ferrier*  have  the  most  direct  bear- 
ing on  this  point. 

So  far  as  known,  the  frontal  lobes  do  not  contain  either  sen- 
sory or  motor  centers.  It  has  been  regarded  by  some  as  the  seat 
of  the  higher  psychical  activities,  such  as  reflection,  comparison 
and  judgment.  The  emotions  and  affections  are  also  assigned 
to  this  region  of  the  brain.  When  the  frontal  portion  of  the 
hemispheres  is  removed  in  animals,  e.  g.,  the  monkey,  no  irregu- 
larities in  the  exercise  of  the  motor  or  sensory  functions  occur ; 
yet  in  such  cases  the  animal  appears  more  whimsical  and  less  af- 
fectionate than  before  the  operation. 

In  connection  with  what  has  been  said  in  this  chapter  with  ref- 
erence to  the  localization  of  the  cerebral  functions  and  of  the 
importance  of  these  cortical  areas  in  the  relation  to  the  motor 
and  sensory  life  of  man,  it  seems  strange  that  occasionally  man 
may  lose  much  of  the  cortical  gray  matter  of  his  brain  without 
exhibiting  any  serious  impairment  of  his  faculties.  If  perchance 
any  of  the  motor  centers  on  one  hemisphere  have  experienced  an 
injury,  the  result  will  be  the  impairment  of  the  body,  yet  the  loss 
of  some  few  of  the  sensory  centers  on  one  hemisphere  will  not  be 
perceptible  so  long  as  the  corresponding  centers  on  the  other 
hemisphere  remain  sound,  except  in  this,  that  the  person  with 
but  half  a  brain  in  normal  condition  will  tire  more  easily  than 
the  person  in  whom  both  hemispheres  are  completely  intact. 

*See  "  Functions  of  the  Brain,"  p.  185  ff. 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  91 

There  are  some  interesting  though  exceedingly  rare  cases  in 
which  man  has  lost  a  large  quantity  of  the  cortical  matter  with- 
out apparent  disorganization  of  his  psychic  life.  The  following 
cases  are  instanced  by  Hermann  in  Vol.  II  of  his  Physiologie  : 

"Berenger  de  Corpi  tells  of  a  young  man  into  whose  brain  a 
body  four  finger  breadths  in  width  and  as  many  in  length  had 
been  driven  so  deep  that  it  lay  concealed  by  the  matter  of  the 
brain.  When  it  was  removed  a  certain  amount  of  cerebral  sub- 
stance was  lost,  and  thirteen  days  afterwards  a  second  discharge 
occurred  spontaneously.  The  man  recovered,  showed  no  diseased 
symptoms,  lived  for  a  long  time  afterwards,  and  attained  high 
distinction  in  the  church. 

"Longet  knew  a  general  who,  through  a  wound  in  the  skull 
near  the  crown  of  his  head,  had  suffered  a  considerable  loss  of 
brain  substance.  This  defect  permanently  manifested  itself  by  a 
depression  in  the  part  of  the  skull  affected.  The  general  pre- 
served his  activity  of  mind;  his  correct  judgment  in  professional 
matters  exhibited  no  traces  of  disease;  only  he  was  wont  to  tire 
quickly  when  engaged  in  intellectual  work. 

"  Quesnay  tells  of  an  old  servant  whose  right  parietal  bone  was 
crushed.  Every  day  cerebral  matter  oozed  from  the  wound  and 
was  removed.  On  the  eighteenth  day  the  patient  fell  out  of  bed, 
which  resulted  in  further  considerable  losses  of  brain-substance. 
On  the  thirty-fifth  day  he  got  drunk;  a  fresh  emission  of  cere- 
bral matter  occurred  which  was  caused  by  the  patient's  tearing 
away,  in  his  intoxication,  the  bandages  about  the  wound.  On 
the  day  following  it  could  be  seen  that  the  defect  reached  almost 
to  the  corpus  callosum.  The  patient  got  well;  his  psychical 
functions  were  restored  to  their  complete  activity,  but  he  re- 
mained paralyzed  on  his  left  side. 

"During  the  blasting  of  a  rock,  a  crowbar  three  feet  and 
seven  inches  long,  and  one  and  a  quarter  inch  thick  struck  a 
young  man,  and  penetrating  the  head  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
joint  of  the  left  jaw,  passed  through  the  skull  and  came  out  on 
the  same  side  in  the  region  of  the  forehead,  having  thus  run 
through  the  hemisphere  of  the  brain.  The  man  got  well,  lived 


92  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

twelve  and  a  half  years  afterwards,  and  apart  from  the  blind- 
ness caused  by  the  injury  to  the  eye,  he  showed  no  indications  of 
abnormality,  except  certain  fits  of  peevishness,  caprice,  and  ob- 
stinacy. He'also  lost  the  former  habit  of  profanity. 

"A  whole  hemisphere  may  sometimes  be  removed,  without 
injury  to  the  higher  psychical  functions.  But  in  such  a  case  dis- 
turbances of  the  motor  functions  on  the  opposite  side  appear 
regularly  to  set  in." 

It  is,  however,  quite  a  common  occurrence  in  the  case  of  ani- 
mals to  have  large  lesions  of  the  cortical  matter  unattended  by 
serious  mental  defects.  While  at  Strassburg  in  1891, 1  visited 
Goltz's  laboratory.  Among  other  interesting  objects  a  dog  was 
shown  me  which  had^  undergone  a  lesion  of  the  entire  cerebrum. 
I  was  told  that  the  operation  had  been  performed  two  years  pre- 
vious to  my  visit  to  the  laboratory.  The  dog  was  normal  in  most 
respects.  He  manifested  much  joy  at  being  let  out  of  his  cage; 
masticated  and  swallowed  meat;  followed  Prof.  Ewald  and  my- 
self from  one  room  to  the  other;  stood  on  his  hind  legs  and 
danced  about  when  meat  was  held  above  him  and  out  of  his 
reach.  He  would  jump  over  a  stick  and  also  run  and  frolic.  A 
second  animal  shown  me  in  the  same  laboratory  was  an  ape  with 
a  complete  lesion  of  the  entire  left  cerebral  hemisphere.  The 
remarkable  feature  in  the  case  was  that  the  ape  reached  for  his 
food  with  the  right  hand  instead  of  the  left,  as  would  naturally 
be  expected.  Still  when  eating  he  seemed  to  prefer  to  hold  the 
food  in  his  left  hand.  He  retained  his  wonted  sauciness  and  at- 
tempted to  scratch  the  face  of  every  person  who  approached  his 
cage.  Of  course  lower  animals  use  their  higher  cerebral  centers 
less  than  man,  and  it  is  quite  natural  that  they  should  so  well 
withstand  the  partial  or  even  complete  loss  of  the  cortical  area 
on  the  hemispheres. 

You  will  remember  that  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  we 
spoke  of  cerebral  localization  as  if  it  were  an  absolute  fact,  and 
such  it  actually  is,  if  we  confine  our  attention  to  man  and  mon- 
keys only.  When,  however,  we  study  cerebral  localization  in  the 
vertebrate  series,  we  find  that  it  becomes  less  perfect  as  we  pass 


THE  BRAIN  AND  ITS  FUNCTIONS.  93 

down  the  animal  scale.  I  have  already  referred  you  to  instances 
of  animals,  which,  having  lost  some  of  the  brain  substance,  still 
apparently  retain  their  mental  faculties.  In  addition  to  the  ex- 
amples already  given  ,we  have  still  another  furnished  also  by  Goltz. 
The  case  is  that  of  the  brain  of  a  dog  with  the  right  hemisphere 
removed.  The  animal  lived  about  fourteen  months  after  the  last 
operation.  The  senses  of  sight,  hearing,  smell,  and  taste  were 
more  or  less  impaired.  In  the  brain  of  a  second  dog  it  was  in- 
tended to  remove  the  frontal  portion  of  both  hemispheres.  How- 
ever, in  addition  to  the  extended  extirpation  a  secondary  degen- 
eration of  the  left  occipital  region  took  place,  leaving  as  a  result 
scarcely  more  than  one-fourth  of  the  two  hemispheres  intact. 
The  dog  lived  two  and  a  half  months  after  the  last  operation. 
It  did  not  take  food  voluntarily,  but  when  food  was  given  it  all 
the  mechanical  processes  of  chewing  and  swallowing  were  exe- 
cuted. The  so-called  "emotional  sounds "  — barking,  whining, 
growling,  etc. — were  evoked  in  their  normal  relations,  respectively. 
In  ohe  case  of  a  third  dog,  which  had  undergone  a  complete  re- 
moval of  both  hemispheres,  we  find  the  animal  required  to  be  fed, 
but  would  properly  masticate  and  swallow  if  the  food  were  placed 
well  back  in  its  mouth.  It  could  move  spontaneously,  would 
stand  upon  its  hind  legs,  and  walk  in  a  fairly  normal  manner.  It 
preserved  only  a  remnant  of  vision,  and  as  far  as  could  be  learned, 
had  no  sensations  of  hearing,  taste,  or  smell.  A  rabbit  is  less 
disturbed  by  the  loss  of  its  hemispheres  than  the  dog,  a  peculiar 
characteristic  being  that  it  retains  the  sense  of  hearing.  Birds, 
reptiles,  and  frogs  are  each  in  turn  still  less  disturbed  by  the  re- 
moval of  the  cerebral  hemispheres.  When  the  hemispheres  of  the 
shark  are  removed  the  animal  can  no  longer  feed;  it  can  see,  but 
this  is  of  no  value  to  it,  since  it  depends  entirely  upon  its  sense  of 
smell.  An  observation  of  Steiner  is  in  this  connection  exceedingly 
interesting.  "If  the  cerebrum  of  a  shark  be  cut  out  unsymmet- 
rically,  forced  movements  occur,  the  animal  swims  in  a  circle.  If 
a  shark  be  beheaded,  its  trunk  swims  in  a  straight  line." 

When  we  compare  the  brain  in  the  various  vertebrates,  we  find 
that  man's  brain  is  distinguished  by  a  special  development  of  the 


94  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

frontal  lobes;  in  the  monkey's  brain,  a  special  development  of 
the  occipital  lobes  is  to  be  noticed ;  while  that  of  the  fox  is  char- 
acterized by  a  striking  development  of  the  parietal  lobes. 

There  is  still  one  other  important  modification  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  different  parts  of  the  brain  in  the  vertebrate  series. 
This  is  the  change  from  the  horizontal  arrangement,  where  (e.  g., 
sheep)  the  cerebellum,  pons  and  medulla  lie  in  one  plane  with  the 
elongated  cerebrum,  to  the  erect  position  which  brings  the  me- 
dulla directly  underneath  the  hemispheres,  and  places  the  cerebel- 
lum immediately  under  the  occipital  lobes.  This  modification 
will  seem  the  more  significant  when  it  is  remembered  that  the  ele- 
vation of  the  head  causes  an  animal  to  rely  more  on  its  eyes  and 
less  upon  its  nose.  "  The  animal  of  scent  becomes  an  animal  of 
vision.  The  jaws  recede,  and  the  different  parts  of  the  brain  are 
piled  upon  one  another  so  as  to  shape  the  hemispheres  into  a 
dome-like  cupola." 


LESSON  VIII. 

SENSATION. 

IN  a  previous  chapter  it  was  stated  that  the  nervous  system 
falls-  into  three  main  divisions,  (a)  the  fibers  which  carry  the 
currents  in;  (b)  the  central  organs  —  especially  the  brain;  (c) 
the  fibers  which  carry  the  currents  out.  You  have  also  seen  that 
we  have  sensation,  reflection  (in  the  widest  meaning  of  the  term), 
and  motion  corresponding  to  these  three  anatomical  and  func- 
tional divisions.  Sense-perception,  as  you  know, is  the  power  by 
which  we  gain  knowledge  of  material  things.  Were  it  not  for  the 
impressions  objects  make  upon  our  senses,  we  would  never  know 
objects.  A  pure  or  simple  sensation  is  never  ours  to  experience. 
Such  a  thing  as  a  pure,  single  sensation  is  abstraction — a  fiction. 
Our  experiences  are  always  made  up  of  groups  of  sensations.  One 
cannot  see  the  yellowness  of  the  orange  apart  from  its  other 
qualities — its  roundness,  smoothness,  size,  and  weight.  Every 
adult  experience  is  made  up  of  many  sensations  and  not  of  sin- 
gle, simple,  isolated  sense-impressions. 

A  sensation  can  scarcely  be  defined  since  it  is  itself  so  elemen- 
tary. We  can,  however,  indicate  its  meaning  by  saying  that  a 
sensation  is  a  simple  mental  state  resulting  from  any  stimula- 
tion being  transmitted  to  the  brain  centers.  This  stimulation  can 
occur  in  three  different  ways :  First,  by  reason  of  some  sort  of 
mechanical  jarring  of  the  brain  itself,  as  when  a  boy  in  his  first 
attempt  at  skating  strikes  the  back  of  his  head  on  the  ice  and  as 
a  result  " sees  stars;"  second,  the  brain  centers  are  stimulated 
by  means  of  changes  in  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  blood 
supply— for  example,  the  sensation  of  faintness  when  the  blood 
rushes  to  the  head  or  the  "roaring  in  the  ears"  after  a  heavy 
dose  of  quinine;  third,  and  by  far  the  most  common,  the  brain 
centers  are  aroused  or  stimulated  by  means  of  the  nerve  current 

(95) 


96  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

produced  by  the  excitation  of  an  end-organ  at  the  outer  extremity 
of  some  incarrying  or  afferent  nerve,  being  transmitted  to  the 
brain — for  example,  the  sensation  produced  by  touching  a  point 
on  the  skin  with  a  hot  iron,  or  that  caused  by  the  ringing  of  a 
bell,  or  the  blast  of  a  whistle. 

The  mechanical  jars  that  may  happen  to  the  brain  mass  itself 
are  exceedingly  infrequent  and  like  the  sensations  produced  by 
the  changes  in  the  quality  and  quantity  of  the  blood  supply,  are 
very  transitory.  The  nerve  currents,  however,  do  play  a  most 
important  part  in  our  psychic  life.  ^477  our  knowledge  of  the  out- 
side world  comes  to  the  mind  via  the  end  organs  of  sense,  afferent 
nerves  and  brain  centers.  We  could  never  know  the  least  iota 
with  reference  to  objects  about  us  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  in 
some  way  these  objects  do  act  upon  our  senses.  The  person 
born  blind  can  have  no  idea  at  all  of  color,  the  one  born  deaf  can 
have  no  idea  of  sound.  Imagine  how  limited  your  experience 
would  be,  if  you  were  simply  both  color  blind  and  incapable  of 
discriminating  pitch  and  tone  among  the  various  sounds.  What 
a  cold,  gray,  monotonous  world  it  would  be  if  we  had  no  appre- 
ciation of  colors  or  musical  tones !  Yet  such  a  limitation  is  as 
nothing  when  compared  with  absolute  insensibility  to  light  and 
sound.  In  the  asylums  and  schools  for  the  blind  and  deaf  the 
pupils  are  taught  as  much  about  light  and  sound,  respectively,  as 
is  the  normal  child  in  the  average  grammar  or  high  school.  But 
the  best-taught  blind  pupil,  with  all  his  knowledge  about  the 
laws  of  reflection  and  refraction,  the  length  and  intensity  of  the 
"light  waves'5  is  infinitely  far  behind  the  infant  that  can  see. 
The  baby  that  extends  its  chubby  hand  to  grasp  the  red  ball  or 
the  sickly  yellow  "jumping  jack"  is  far  in  advance  of  the  best 
educated  blind  person  who  may  be  ever  so  well  informed  with 
reference  to  the  Young-Helmholtzian  theory  of  colors. 

All  education  must  begin  with  the  education  of  the  senses. 
Not  any  single  sense,  but  all  of  them  must  be  developed  if  you 
would  have  an  evenly  developed  pupil  as  the  result  of  your  in- 
struction. All  experience  is  interpreted  and  all  instruction  given 
on  the  basis  of  "sensation-knowledge."  You  must  appeal  to 


SENSATION.  97 

something  the  child  has  already  seen,  swelled,  beard,  tasted,  or 
handled,  if  you  wish  to  convey  to  him  the  knowledge  of  any  new 
object.  To  define  a  new  color  such  as  "  His  Eminence"  or  " Ele- 
phant's Breath,"  you  must  appeal  to  color  sensations  already 
experienced.  In  fact,  the  "  new  shades  "  of  the  fashion  books  are 
simply  new  names  given  to  old-time  colors.  You  cannot  describe 
the  zebra  to  a  child  without  referring  to  some  animal  he  has  al- 
ready seen — for  example,  the  horse.  We  interpret  all  our  experi- 
ences in  light  of  our  previous  sensations.  The  fictitious  Indian 
who  is  said  to  have  lassoed  the  first  locomotive  he  had  ever  seen 
as  it  steamed  across  the  plains,  and  did  so  under  the  impression 
that  it  was  a  gigantic  buffalo,  evidently  interpreted  the  present 
sensation  by  means  of  previously  experienced  sensations.  The 
locomotive  appeared  more  like  a  buffalo  than  anything  else  he 
had  ever  seen.  The  little  three-year-old  child,  Gretchen,  who,  on 
seeing  the  deer  in  the  park  contentedly  lying  in  the  shade  of  the 
trees,  noticing  them  more  especially  in  the  act  of  chewing  their 
cud,  and  asked,  "What  in  the  world  do  deers  chew  gum  for?" 
evidently  interpreted  what  she  saw  in  light  of  her  own  experiences 
with  "tutti-frutti."  This  same  child,  until  two  years  old,  had 
been  accustomed  to  sleep  with  a  light  burning  in  the  bedcham- 
ber. Thoughtlessly,  the  light  was  extinguished  one  night,  after 
she  had  gone  to  sleep,  without  anything  having  been  said  to  her 
about  it.  In  the  night  she  awakened,  and  in  a  frightened  way  ex- 
citedly called  out  "Oh,  Papa,  I've  lost  my  eyes!  My  eyes  are 
gone!  Oh,  do  help  me  find  my  eyes!"  You  see  the  sensation  of 
darkness  she  experienced  could  be  interpreted  only  in  light  of  her 
previous  sensations.  Before,  when  she  awakened  in  the  night  and 
made  an  effort  to  see  she  was  abundantly  rewarded  with  success. 
This  time  she  made  the  same  effort  but  could  not  see,  therefore, 
she  concluded  that  her  eyes  were  gone,  since  the  sense  of  effort  as 
clearly  experienced  now  as  before,  was  connected  with  no  result- 
ing sensation  of  vision.  She  could  not  be  persuaded  that  her 
eyes  were  intact  until  the  lamp  was  again  lighted  and  the  whole 
matter  explained  to  her,  notwithstanding  the  unseasonableness 
of  the  hour,  at  least  so  far  as  psychological  explanations  are 

L.  P.-7 


98  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

concerned.  Another  little  girl  who  said  she  "hugged  dolly  tight 
so  the  cats  wouldn't  frighten  her  with  their  horrid  noises  "  surely 
remembered  something  of  her  own  sensations  of  fright.  The  boy 
who  bats  the' ball  and  tells  by  the  "  feel  of  the  bat "  whether  it  is 
a  fair.hit  or  a  foul,  bases  his  judgment  on  muscular  sensations 
previously  experienced . 

There  is  no  gainsaying  the  fact  that  all  education  naturally 
begins  with  the  education  of  the  senses.  Of  course  the  child,  on 
entering  school  is  one-sided  in  his  development.  For  example, 
his  eye  may  have  been  developed  at  the  expense  of  his  ear.  The 
child  reared  in  the  tenement  house  could  possibly  have  no  such 
eye  development  as  the  child  of  the  same  age  who  has  had  the 
advantages  of  roaming  over  the  hills,  along  the  brooks  and 
through  the  woods  of  the  country.  If,  in  our  educational  meth- 
ods, we  would,  as  teachers,  pay  especial  and  almost  exclusive 
attention  to  the  proper  development  of  the  senses,  we  would  find 
that  the  motor  impulses  and  resulting  movements  would  take 
care  of  themselves,  developing  right  in  line  with  the  correspond- 
ing sense  development.  If  the  infant  experiences  no  sensations  it 
will  never  move.  The  child  is  right-eyed  before  it  is  right-handed. 
Sensory  paralysis  will  always  cause  motor  paralysis.  Educate 
the  senses  and  the  coordinate  movements  educate  themselves. 

One  other  point— even  if  it  be  a  diversion,  it  is  an  observation 
that  should  be  given  at  least  a  passing  thought— we  all  admit 
that  it  is  worse  than  a  waste  of  time  to  read  an  effusive  poem  on 
"The  Sunset"  to  a  person  always  blind;  and  yet  oftentimes  in 
our  teaching  we  do  what  is  worse — we  use  words  that  convey  no 
definite  meaning  to  the  would-be  learner  because  they  are  not 
founded  on  any  sensory  experience.  Children  in  entirely  new  ex- 
periences frequently  base  their  judgment  on  previous  experiences 
even  if  they  have  been  gained  through  some  other  avenue  of  sense. 
The  child  sees  an  article  of  food  which  it  has  never  seen  before.  It 
knows  nothing  of  the  taste  and  judges  whether  it  will  like  it  en- 
tirely on  the  basis  of  whether  it  is  pleasing  to  the  eye  or  not— its 
judgment  being  visual  judgment  rather  than  a  taste  judgment. 
To  some  children  a  given  dish,  such  as  fruit  or  berries,  will  not 


SENSATION.  09 

taste  sweet  unless  the  sugar  can  be  seen.  The  gaily  colored 
striped  candy  of  the  corner  grocery  is  more  the  object  of  the 
child's  fancy  than  plainer,  more  healthful  confections  would  be, 
for  it  appeals  to  his  child-eye  as  well  as  palate.  Whatever  at- 
tractions the  red  lemonade  of  the  traveling  circus  has  for  the 
average  urchin  must  be  based  on  visual  rather  than  gustatory 
sensations.  A  little  boy  who  had  never  heard  the  croak  of  a  frog 
described  the  sound  as  "  That  little  round  noise." 

The  brain  processes  with  which  sensations  are  always  con 
nected,  are  produced,  then,  by  nerve  currents,  coming  from  the 
periphery  of  the  body.    As  already  stated,  some  external  object 
must  excite  some  one  of  the  various  end  organs  of  sense  before 
the  sensation  can  possibly  arise  in  consciousness. 

You  see,  then,  that  four  antecedents  must  precede  each  and  every 
sensation : 

First.  An  exciting  cause— the  stimulus  producing  changes  in  end 
organs  of  the  sensory  nerves. 

Second.  The  action  of  this  cause  upon  the  nerves  by  means  of 
the  end  organs.  The  "ether  waves"  that  never  reach  the  optic 
nerve,  produce  no  visual  sensations. 

'Third.  Some  sort  of  transmission  to  the  brain  centers  by  means 
of  the  nerve  fibers. 

Fourth.  Activity  of  some  sort  within  the  brain  center  itself. 

In  order  to  have  light  from  the  incandescent  electric  lamp  one 
must  turn  with  his  finger  the  switch  or  key,  in  order  to  allow  the 
current  to  pass  to  the  platinum  wire  within  the  vacuum  globe  of 
the  lamp.  If  this  could  be  accomplished  in  some  other  way  the 
result  would  be  the  same — a  light  of  so  and  so  much  candle  power. 
So  the  function  of  the  nerves  is  really  to  bring  about  changes  in 
the  brain  center.  If  these  brain  centers  can  be  incited  into  activity 
by  any  other  means  (a  mechanical  jar  or  changes  in  the  quantity 
and  quality  of  the  blood  supply)  you  have  the  sensation  existing 
just  as  truly  as  if  the  impulse  had  originated  at  some  outer  end 
organ  and  been  conveyed  by  some  nerve  to  the  brain. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  thenerves  as  nerves  do  not  differ  from 
other.  The  nerve  whose  activity  gives  rise  to  a  sensation  of 


100  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

sound,  is,  as  a  nerve,  not  one  whit  different  from  the  nerve  that 
brings  to  us  the  sensation  of  smeil.  The  specific  differences  in  the 
various  sensations  are  not  due  to  any  difference  in  the  several 
nerves  conveying  the  impressions,  but  due  rather  to  differences  in 
the  end  organs  of  sense.  That  the  optic  nerve  conveys  visual, 
and  the  ear  auditory  impressions,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  eye 
is  different  from  the  ear  rather  than  that  the  optic  nerve  is  in  any 
way  different  from  the  auditory  nerve.  On  the  other  hand,  "  If," 
as  Professor  James  says,  "we  could  splice  the  outer  extremity 
of  our  optic  nerves  to  our  ears,  and  that  of  our  auditory  nerves 
to  our  eyes,  we  should  hear  the  lightning  and  see  the  thunder,  see 
the  symphony  and  hear  the  conductor's  movements." 

Sensations  are,  as  has  already  been  said,  the  immediate  results 
of  nervous  excitations  entering  the  brain.  Were  there  no  such 
impressions,  no  such  neural  excitations,  there  would  never  beany 
brain  activity — it  would  be  plunged  in  deep  sleep  and  midnight 
darkness,  and  consciousness  could  never  arise.  That  we  have 
different  kinds  of  sensations  is  due  to  the  different  kinds  of  end 
organs  of  sense.  We  shall  now  discuss  the  various  sorts  of  sen- 
sations which  we  experience  in  common,  beginning  with  the  sen- 
sations of 

TASTE. 

The  end  organs  of  taste  consist  of  the  so-called  "gustatory 
bulbs,"  or,  as  some  designate  them,  the  "gustatory  knobs"  or 
1 '  gustatory  flasks."  The  latter  term  is  probably  the  most  suita- 
ble name,  since  it  best  indicates  the  shape  of  these  minute  end- 
organs  of  the  taste  sense.  These  little  flasks  are  scattered  some- 
what irregularly  over  the  tongue,  palate  and  epiglottis,  but  are 
most  thickly  clustered  in  the  little  papillae,  or  ridges  found  on 
the  surface  of  the  tongue.  Without  these  little  gustatory  flasks 
no  sensations  of  taste  are  possible,  no  matter  if  every  nerve  lead- 
ing from  the  tongue  and  inner  surface  of  the  mouth  is  in  a  nor- 
mal condition.  These  bulbs  or  flasks  are  so  constructed  that 
only  fluids  can  be  tasted.  Solids  and  gases  must  first  be  reduced 
to  a  liquid  state  before  sensations  of  taste  can  possibly  be  ex- 
perienced. Only  four  qualities  of  taste  can  be  designated  with 


SENSATION.  '    :>    >      ;- 

thoroughgoing  certainty.  They  are  — sweet,  sour,  bitter,  and 
salt.  Some  of  you  may  be  quick  to  add  a  multitude  of  tastes 
which  we  distinguish  in  bur  food — e.  g.,  the  taste  of  a  banana, 
pear,  onion,  peach,  and  potato.  But  in  such  cases  what  we 
designate  as  taste  is  not  taste  at  all.  It  is  really  smell.  It  is 
not  the  sensation  of  taste  that  makes  the  strawberry  such  an 
edible  fruit  but  really  a  sensation  of  smell.  The  intimate  connec- 
tion of  taste  with  smell  is  seen  in  cases  where  the  impairment  of 
the  sense  of  smell  by  disease  or  a  bad  cold  destroys  or  seriously 
modifies  the  ability  to  taste.  Some  foods  in  being  masticated 
or  swallowed  are  vaporized  in  the  back  part  of  the  mouth  and 
thence  reach  the  cavity  of  the  nose  where  this  vapor  product  is 
smelled.  The  sense  of  taste  pure  and  simple,  does  not  admit  of 
many  varieties.  It  is  extraordinarily  limited  in  this  respect. 
To  take  an  example,  the  numberless  acids  of  chemistry  all  arouse 
but  one  sensation  of  taste — sour — which  varies  only  in  intensity. 
A  solution  of  quinine  in  the  proportion  of  1:100,000  cannot  be 
distinguished  from  a  solution  of  morphine  in  the  proportion  of 
1:3,000.  The  bitterness  of  the  quinine  solution  is  like  the  bitter- 
ness of  the  morphine  solution. 

That  much  of  what  is  ordinarily  called  taste  is  really  taste 
plus  smell  or  touch  or  both  can  be  substantiated  by  a  very  sim- 
ple experiment.  With  the  eyes  closed  or  blindfolded,  and  the 
nostrils  held  so  as  to  cut  off  sensations  of  smell  you  will  find  it 
absolutely  impossible  to  distinguish,  by  taste  alone,  the  differ- 
ence between  small  quantities  of  scraped  apple  and  scraped 
potato  when  placed  on  the  tongue. 

The  minute  flask-like  organs  that  perceive  the  various  tastes 
are  in  a  measure  grouped  together;  those  that  perceive  bitter 
by  themselves,  those  that  perceive  sour  in  another  locality  by 
themselves.  For  example,  the  sensations  of  bitter  generally,  if 
not  always,  come  from  the  root  of  the  tongue,  while  sweet  and 
sour  are  tasted  with  the  tip  of  the  tongue  and  the  salt  at  the 
side  edges.  Nearly  all  substances,  even  sugar,  will  evoke  a  bit- 
ter taste  when  applied  solely  to  the  root  of  the  tongue. 

It  has  been  found  that  sensations  of  the  taste  may  be  aroused 


1U2,  -  PRAOTLCAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

by  (electrical  stimulation  at  different  portions  of  the  tongue  and 
palate  as  well  as  at  the  epiglottis.  If  you  use  a  constant  current 
and  two  electrodes — one  above  and  the  other  under  the  tongue  — 
you  will  observe  a  sour  taste  at  the  positive  pole  of  the  current 
and  an  alkaline-like  taste  at  the  negative  pole. 

The  sensitiveness  of  the  organs  of  taste  are  much  more  acute 
than  we  are  apt  to  think.  The  work  done  a  few  years  ago  by 
Bailey  and  Nichols  in  experimenting  with  reference  to  the  mini- 
mal tastes  that  can  be  perceived,  is  well  known  and  very  interest- 
ing in  this  connection.  These  two  investigators  made  the  observa- 
tions upon  128  persons,  whose  ages  ranged  from  twelve  to  fifty 
years.  Of  this  number  82  were  men  and  46  women.  Bitter,  sweet, 
acid,  alkaline  and  saline  were  regarded  by  them  as  the  funda- 
mental and  representative  tastes,  and  solutions  of  substances 
were  used  in  order  to  test  the  discriminative  ability  of  the  taste- 
organs — or,  rather,  to  test  the  organs  with  reference  to  minimal 
tastes.  The  substances  selected  were  as  follows  : 

1.  Bitter — Quinine  bisulphate. 

2.  Sweet — Cane  sugar. 

3.  Acid— Sulphuric,  acid. 

4.  Alkaline — Sodium  bicarbonate. 

5.  Saline — Common  salt. 

The  results  obtained  were  these : 

I.    QUININE. 

Men  detect  one  part  in  390,000  parts  of  water. 
Women  detect  one  part  in  456,000  parts  of  water. 

II.    CANE  SUGAR. 

Men  detect  one  part  in  199  parts  of  water. 
Women  detect  one  part  in  204  parts  of  water. 

III.  SULPHURIC  ACID. 

Men  detect  one  part  in  2,080  parts  of  water. 
Women  detect  one  part  in  3,280  parts  of  water. 

IV.  BICARBONATE  OF  SODA. 

Men  detect  one  part  in  98  parts  of  water. 
Women  detect  one  part  in  120  parts  of  water. 


SENSATION.  103 

V.    COMMON  SALT. 

Men  detect  one  part  in  2,240  parts  of  water. 
Women  detect  one  part  in  1,980  parts  of  water. 

It  is  seen  from  the  above  that  as  a  rule  the  sense  of  taste  is 
more  finely  developed  in  women  than  in  men.  The  exception  to 
this  rule  is  the  case  of  common  salt.  While  this  is  the  rule  with 
respect  to  the  sense  of  taste,  Ma'ggiori  and  Mosso  have  found 
that  in  general  the  senses  are  more  acute  and  delicate  in  men 
than  in  women. 

Of  course,  you  cannot  compare  extreme  sensibility  for  one  sort 
of  taste  with  that  for  another  taste.  From  the  table  given  you 
you  might  be  inclined  to  argue  that  the  sense  organs  of  taste  are 
better  developed  for  bitter  than  for  sweet;  but  you  can  hardly 
do  this  because  you  cannot  say  the  quinine  is  as  bitter  as  the 
sugar  is  sweet,  or  the  lemon  is  as  sour  as  a  particular  substance 
is  salt,  any  more  than  you  can  say  that  the  rose  is  as  red  as  the 
buttercup  is  yellow,  or  that  the  sky  is  as  blue  as  a  noise  is  loud. 

Sensations  of  taste  may  be  greatly  modified  or  even  obliterated 
when  the  temperature  of  the  end  organ  of  taste  is  extremely  warm 
or  cold.  Fill  the  mouth  with  hot  water,  hold  it  for  a  moment, 
then  expel  it.  Immediately  after,  place  a  little  salt  or  sugar  on 
the  tongue  and  you  will  find  that  the  usual  sensations  of  taste 
are  not  experienced.  If  you  take  a  small  piece  of  ice  into  the 
mouth  and  hold  it  near  the  root  of  the  tongue  you  will  find  that 
quinine,  if  placed  in  the  same  locality,  will  give  rise  to  no  sensa- 
tion of  bitter  as  is  ordinarily  the  case. 

SMELL. 

The  sense  of  smell  is  possessed  even  by  some  of  the  lower  ani- 
mal forms.  A  blinded  starfish  can  scent  a  crab  (its  chosen  article 
of  diet)  at  quite  a  considerable  distance.  The  shark  is  largely 
dependent  upon  the  sense  of  smell.  Destroy  this  sense  and  the 
shark  will  refuse  to  eat  though  he  can  see  ever  so  well.  The  feel- 
ers of  many  insects  are  in  reality  organs  of  smell.  Certain  organs 
of  smell  exist  in  the  outer  extremities  of  the  antennules  of  crabs. 

In  all  vertebrates  the  end  organs  of  smell  are  found  in  the  regio 


104  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

olfactoria  of  the  nose,  which  consists  of  a  mucous  membrane  cov- 
ered with  a  layer  of  cells,  and  these  cells  give  off  certain  hair-like 
processes.  The  smell  apparatus  is  a  very  simple  contrivance. 
All  that  is  necessary  is  that  a  current  of  air,  in  which  stimulating 
particles  float,  be  drawn  through  the  nose  over  the  mucous  mem- 
brane of  the  regio  olfactoria.  The  strongest  substances,  such  as 
ammonia  and  camphor,  even  when  placed  directly  under  the 
nostrils,  have  no  smell  as  long  as  the  breath  is  held,  or  inhaled 
through  the  mouth  instead  of  the  nose.  We  seldom  smell  in  ex- 
haling, because  in  expiration  the  air  does  not  pass  so  directly 
over  the  olfactory  regions  as  in  inspiration.  The  end  organs  ol 
the  sense  of  smell  are  very  easily  fatigued.  If  you  hold  a  piece  of 
camphor  gum  to  the  nose  and  smell  of  it  continuously,  inhaling 
through  the  nose  and  exhaling  through  the  mouth,  you  find 
after  a  few  minutes  that  a  very  marked  decrease  in  the  intensity 
of  the  sensation  will  be  noticed  extending  even  to  entire  loss  of 
the  ability  to  perceive  the  odor  for  the  time  being.  It  must  be 
added  that  fatigue  for  one  substance  does  not  necessarily  involve 
fatigue  for  all  others.  Smell  of  some  essence  of  cloves,  then  of 
some  ordinary  yellow  beeswax,  and  then  fatigue  for  camphor  as 
above.  If  you  then  smell  of  the  wax  and  essence  of  cloves  again, 
you  will  in  all  probability  find  that  the  odor  of  these  two  sub- 
stances is  unaffected. 

Smells  do  not  really  admit  of  classification.  The  classification 
sometimes  made  use  of — namely,  pleasant  and  unpleasant  smells 
— has  no  real  basis,  for  it  depends  entirely  upon  individual  pecul- 
iarities; as  Professor  Ladd  remarks, "  to  some  the  smell  of  burn- 
ing feathers,  of  assafcetida,  of  valerian  or  of  rank  cheese  is  pleas- 
ant." Speaking  of  the  possibility  of  classifying  smells  Dr.  Por- 
ter tells  us  that — "  Their  varieties  are  almost  endless.  The  odors 
from  flowers,  from  food, from  perfumes, from  woods, from  earths, 
from  metals  and  from  many  other  objects,  are  too  numerous  to 
be  classed  or  named  except  in  a  very  general  way.  We  c/as-s 
them  in  a  few  general  and  obvious  groups,  as  quickening,  refresh- 
ing, depressing,  sickening,  aromatic,  spicy,  etc.,  etc.  We  name 
them  usually  from  the  objects  which  excite  them,  as  the  odor  of 


SENSATION.  105 

1  he  violet  and  the  lilac,  of  the  rose  and  the  tuberose,  of  the  peach 
and  the  apple,  of  cedar  and  camphor-wood." 

The  minimum  stimulus  for  the  end  organs  of  smell  is  very 
small  for  a  large  number  of  substances.  For  example,  -^-^^ 
part  of  a  milligram  of  an  alcoholic  solution  of  musk  is  perceptible, 
likewise  -j^o--^-^^  of  a  milligram  of  mercaptan  is  sufficient  to 
produce  a  sensation  of  smell. 

In  paralytics  both  the  senses  of  smell  and  of  taste  are  usually 
disturbed.  Kornfeld  and  Bikeles  have  made  a  large  number  of 
experiments  in  this  line,  and  find  that  with  reference  to  the  sense  of 
smell,  it  was  noticed  that  certain  paralytics  could  not  recognize 
the  odor  of  onions,  caraway-seed,  or  vinegar.  One  patient  mis- 
took the  odor  of  an  onion  for  that  of  a  lemon ;  and  the  same 
patient  could  not  recognize  the  odor  of  garlic;  while  another 
called  the  odor  of  vinegar  that  of  ordinary  whisky. 

The  sensations  of  taste  in  these  paralytics  were  experimented 
upon  chiefly  by  means  of  standard  solutions.  The  folio  wing  were 
some  of  the  results :  At  the  tip  and  sides  of  the  tongue  the  pa- 
tients appear  in  general  to  have  no  correct  sense  of  taste.  For 
example,  the  patient  would  designate  a  4-per  cent,  solution  of 
salt  as  sour.  "Salty  "and  "sour"  could  not  be  distinguished 
from  each  other,  for  the  salt  solution  above  referred  to  was  fre- 
quently designated  as  sour,  and  a  citric-acid  solution  as  salty. 
Even  quinine  bisulphate  was  regarded  as  sweet,  sour,  or  salty 
interchangeably.  At  the  root  of  the  tongue  the  followingresults 
were  obtained.  A  4-per  cent,  solution  of  sugar  was  perceived  as 
tasteless,  while  an  8-per  cent,  salt  solution  was  designated  sour. 
In  experiments  with  this  latter  solution,  if  the  patient  were  per- 
mitted to  roll  his  tongue  and  draw  it  back,  he  would  then  some- 
times designate  the  taste  as  slightly  salty;  others  would  say  that 
the  2-per  cent,  solution  of  citric  acid  tasted  the  same  as  the  8- 
per  cent,  solution  of  salt;  still  another  characterized  as  bitter 
this  same  citric-acid  solution. 

When  applied  to  the  gums,  sour  and  salty  substances  were 
most  frequently  regarded  as  bitter;  while  an  8-per  cent,  solution 
of  quinine,  on  the  other  hand,  was  not  perceived  as  bitter,  but 


106  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

rather  as  acid  and  astringent.  When  permitted  to  swallow 
this  strong  solution,  they  would  experience  a  slightly  bitter 
taste. 

Much  more>important  to  the  Psychologist  than  the  sensation 
of  smell  or  taste  are  the  various  sensations  of  feeling  in  the  skin. 
The  dermal  senses  comprise  the  temperature  sense,  the  pressure 
sense,  the  tickle  sense  and  the  tactile  sense  proper.  It  must  be 
remembered  in  this  connection  that  sensibility  of  the  skin  is  the 
first  sense  that  appears,  and  the  one  from  which  all  others  have 
probably  been  developed  by  gradual  steps  and  stages  in  the  pro- 
cess of  evolution.  The  eye,  ear,  regio  olfactoria,,  etc.,  may  be 
regarded  as  highly  differentiated  portions  of  the  skin.  The  sense 
of  sight  is  at  first  a  generalized  property,  many  Protozoa  show- 
ing themselves  sensitive  to  light.  In  the  Hydroids,  even  in  the 
fresh-water  species,  we  have  a  good  example  in  that  many  single 
cells  with  direct  muscle  connections  are.  found  scattered  all  over 
the  dermal  surface,  and  are  sensitive  to  light. 


LESSON  IX. 
SENSATION  (CONTINUED). 
THE  TEMPERATURE  SENSE. 

IT  is  an  important  fart  to  remember  that  the  nerves  are  not 
different  from  each  other.  The  sensory  nerves  as  nerves  are 
anatomically,  structurally  and  functionally  alike.  But  some 
nerves  convey  to  the  brain  only  sensations  of  heat,  others  only 
sensations  of  cold,  while  others  carry  to  the  brain  only  sensations 
of  touch  or  simple  contact.  These  differences  are  not  due  to  dif- 
ferences in  the  nerves  themselves,  but  are  due  to  specific  differences 
in  the  end  organs  with  which  they  are  connected.  Magnus  Blix 
has  shown  that  upon  some  one  spot  of  the  skin  only  cold  may  be 
perceived,  upon  another  only  heat,  and  upon  a  third  spot  only 
sensations  of  touch  or  simple  contact.  This  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  different  sorts  of  terminal  organs  are  found  in  different 
localities  on  the  skin.  One  locality  may  abound  in  heat  spots 
while  another  portion  may  abound  in  cold  spots,  as  the  back  of 
the  neck.  We  have,  therefore,  as  end  organs  of  sense  in  the  skin 
itself,  the  "heat  spots,"  "cold  spots,"  "pressure  spots"  and 
"tactile  corpuscles."  Stimulate  any  one  of  these  end  organs  and 
you  evoke. a  corresponding  sensation.  You  cannot  get  the  sensa- 
tion of  heat  by  stimulating  a  cold  spot  any  more  than  you  can 
get  a  sensation  of  sound  by  stimulating  the  eye  with  light.  We 
can  easily  convince  ourselves  of  this  important  fact  by  applying 
the  cold  point  of  a  lead  pencil,  or  better,  the  point  of  a  steel  rod 
here  and  there  on  the  forearm.  After  a  little  such  exploration 
you  will  find  a  locality  at  which  no  sensation  of  cold  will  be  re- 
ceived  i'rom  the  cold  point,  although  a  sensation  of  heat  will  ap- 
pear if  only  the  proper  stimulus  be  applied.  Close  beside  this 
spot  you  will  find  other  localities  that  are  acutely  sensitive  to 
cold,  though  no  sensations  to  warmth  or  touch  can  there  be  per- 

(107) 


108  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ceived.  You  conclude,  therefore,  and  rightly,  too,  that  there  are 
separate  spots  for  perceiving  heat,  cold  and  touch,  and  each  nerve 
fiber  leading  from  these  particular  spots  can  transmit  but  one 
kind  of  sensation.  The  skin  can  be  pretty  well  mapped  out  with 
reference  to  these  end  organs  of  sense,  especially  with  reference  to 
the  heat  and  cold  spots. 

These  two  kinds  of  temperature  spots  respond  with  their  charac- 
teristic sensations,  to  both  mechanical  and  electrical  stimulation. 
If  you  select  a  well  located  cold  spot,  for  example,  on  the  back  of 
the  hand  or  the  volar  side  of  the  index  finger,  and  allow  another 
person  to  tap  it  with  an  ordinary  wooden  toothpick,  you  will 
find  that  a  distinct  sensation  of  cold  arises.  It  is  also  a  singular 
fact  that  these  temperature  spots  give  no  pain  when  punctured, 
as  may  be  substantiated  by  thrusting  a  needle  into  a  well-located 
cold  spot. 

These  temperature  end  organs  respond  also  to  chemical  stimula- 
tion. Take  the  temperature  of  the  skin  on  the  back  of  the  hand 
by  allowing  a  thermometer  to  remain  in  contact  with  it  for  some 
little  time.  Write  down  the  temperature  for  the  purpose  of  com- 
parison later.  Then  take  a  menthol  pencil  (such  as  is  used  to 
relieve  the  headache  and  which  can  be  purchased  at  any  drug 
store)  and  rub  the  skin  with  it.  You  experience  marked  sensa- 
tions of  cold,  because  the  menthol  has  chemically  stimulated 
the  cold  spots,  but  you  find  if  you  again  take  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  skin  with  the  thermometer  it  is  actually  higher  not- 
withstanding the  contrary  sensation  of  cold  which  you  so  dis- 
tinctly feel. 

Furthermore,  the  intensity  of  the  temperature  sensation  de- 
pends upon  the  amount  of  dermal  surface  that  is  stimulated. 
If,  for  example,  you  dip  a  single  finger  in  cold  water  and  immedi- 
ately afterwards  the  whole  hand,  you  will  observe  a  marked 
increase  in  the  intensity  of  the  sensation  of  cold. 

The  feeling  of  temperature  is  relative  to  the  state  of  the  skin. 
In  a  comfortable  room  at  no  part  of  the  body  do  you  feel  heat  or 
cold,  although,  as  physiologists  tell  us,  the  different  parts  of  the 
bodily  surface  are  at  different  temperatures.  Thus  the  fingers  and 


SENSATION.  109 

nose  are  cooler  than  the  trunk  of  the  body,  and  the  trunk  cooler 
than  the  interior  of  the  mouth  cavity.  That  degree  of  tempera- 
ture at  which  a  given  locality  has  the  sensation  of  neither  heat 
nor  cold  is  called  the  zero-point  f  or  that  locality .  This  zero-point  is 
not  only  different  at  different  parts  of  the  body,  but  is  also  a  vari- 
able with  reference  to  the  same  part  from  time  to  time.  On  passing 
from  a  room  of  a  given  temperature  into  one  whose  temperature 
is  higher  or  lower  we  experience  at  first  sensations  of  warnitli  or 
cold  while  our  "zero-point"  is  becoming  adjusted  to  the  new 
environment.  Of  course  the  determination  of  the  exa,ct  zero- 
point  of  different  parts  of  the  body  is  an  exceedingly  difficult 
affair,  being  purely  a  relative  and  not  an  absolute  quantity.  It 
has  been  shown  that  if  the  hand  be  held  for  a  minute  in  the  water 
of  the  temperature  of  54°  and  then  in  water  64°  (Fahrenheit),  a 
sensation  of  heat  will  be  felt  for  a  few  seconds,  although  the  lat- 
ter would  have  felt  cold  to  the  hand  if  placed  in  it  at  first.  You 
have  noticed  perhaps,  when  indulging  in  fruit  ices  or  ice  cream 
that  cold  drinks  such  as  ice  water  and  lemonade  taste  warm  be- 
cause the  zero-point  of  the  mouth  is  for  the  time  being  very  low. 
No  matter  what  the  zero-point  may  happen  to  be,  it  is  always 
found  that  the  skin  is  most  sensitive  to  such  changes  of  tem- 
perature as  lie  near  its  own  zero-point. 

SENSATIONS  OF  PRESSURE   AND  SENSATIONS  OF  CONTACT 

must,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  treated  together. 

Just  as  there  are  heat  and  cold  spots  distributed  over  the 
skin,  so  we  find  that  certain  nerves  terminate  in  what  are  called 
pressure  points  or  pressure  spots,  meaning  those  points  at  which 
a  clear  feeling  of  contact  will  be  perceived  when  appropriately 
stimulated.  Through  these  little  corpuscles  we  recognize  pres- 
sure, and  the  resistance  of  bodies  as  well  as  the  softness  or  hard- 
ness, the  roughness  or  smoothness  of  the  object  causing  the  sen- 
sation. We  find  that  the  delicacy  of  the  sense  of  touch  varies  at 
different  portions  of  the  skin.  It  is  the  greatest  on  the  forehead, 
temples,  back  of  the  forearm,  and  eyelids,  where  an  exceedingly 
small  weight  can  be  distinctly  perceived. 


110  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

• 

The  size  of  the  object,  or  better,  the  amount  of  dermal  surface 
stimulated,  plays  an  important  part  in  our  judgment  of  pressure 
on  the  skin.  If  two  bodies  of  equal  weight  and  unequal  size 
be  placed  at  some  convenient  locality  on  the  skin,  for  example, 
the  palm,  one  after  the  other,  it  will  be  found  that  the  smaller  of 
the  two  will  seem  decidedly  the  heavier. 

Our  sensations  of  pressure  are  greatly  modified  by  the  tem- 
perature of  the  object  used  as  a  stimulus.  Cold  or  hot  bodies 
feel  heavier  than  bodies  of  equal  weight  at  a  normal  temperature. 
If,  for  example,  you  take  two  silver  dollars,  warming  one  until 
it  has  gained  the  same  temperature  as  the  zero-point  of  the  skin, 
and  therefore  ceases  to  seem  cold,  then  cool  the  other  to  about 
12°  centigrade,  and  apply  these  one  after  the  other  to  the  palm 
of  the  hand,  you  will  find  that  the  cold  one  will  seem  much  heav- 
ier, even  as  heavy  as  two  at  the  normal  temperature.  If  you 
take  two  small  wooden  cylinders  about  one  inch  in  diameter  and 
one  and  one-half  inches  long,  and  heat  one  (keeping  it  dry)  till 
it  is  quite  hot,  the  other  remaining  at  the  normal  temperature, 
it  will  be  found  that  the  hot  one  will  seem  the  heavier  when  the 
two  are  placed  alternately  (standing  on  end)  on  the  back  of  the 
hand. 

When  pressure  is  evenly  distributed  over  a  considerable  area  of 
the  skin,  it  is  found  that  it  is  less  strongly  felt  than  pressure  upon 
a  small  area  which  is  bordered  by  one  that  is  not  pressed.  When 
the  hand  is  immersed,  for  example,  in  water,  or  better,  mercury, 
you  will  notice  that  the  sensation  of  pressure  is  strongest  in  the 
ring  about  the  wrists,  that  is,  it  is  felt  only  at  a  line  along  the 
surface  of  the  liquid  where  the  immersed  and  non-immersed  por- 
tions of  the  skin  meet.  This  ring  effect  is  more  pronounced  when 
the  hand  is  moved  up  and  down  in  the  liquid. 

The  fineness  of  the  pressure  sense  is  very  remarkable.  Scarcely 
any  other  sense  will  educate  so  rapidly  and  to  such  a  degree  of 
acuteness.  You  may  judge  something  of  its  powers  in  this  direc- 
tion by  observing  that  the  slightest  unevennessof  surface  may  be 
detected  by  the  sense  of  touch  alone.  Suppose  you  try  this  sim- 
ple experiment :  Place  a  hair  on  a  plate  of  glass  or  an  ordinary 


SENSATION.  Ill 

dinner  plate,  or  any  hard,  smooth  surface,  and  over  it  lay  ten, 
twelve,  or  fifteen  sheets  of  writing  paper.  The  position  of  thehair 
on  the  plate  can  be  easily  detected  by  passing  your  finger  tips 
back  and  forth  over  the  surface  of  the  upper  sheet  of  paper. 

When  the  eyes  are  closed  and  a  point  on  the  skin  is  stimulated 
we  can  pretty  well  indicate  the  locality  which  has  been  touched, 
yet  by  no  means  exactly  the  same  place.  Have  a  friend  close 
his  eyes,  touch  him  on  the  forearm  with  a  pencil-point  and  require 
him  to  touch  the  sameplace  with  another  pencil-point  immediately 
after.  You  will  find  that  he  will  make  an  error  which  youcanmeas- 
ure'with  an  ordinary  graduated  ruler,  and  you  will  also  observe 
that  the  errors  are  generally  constant  in  following  a  given  direc- 
tion. The  accuracy  of  the  localizing  power  varies  widely  at  differ- 
ent localities  on  the  skin.  Toucan  test  the  localizing  power  within 
a  given  locality  by  using  ordinary  compasses  or  dividers,  the 
points  of  which  are  blunted  or  tipped  with  small  bits  of  cork  to 
avoid  the  sharpness  and  coldness  of  the  metal.  Find  the  least 
distance  apart  at  which  the  two  points  of  the  dividers  can  be  rec- 
ognized as  two  when  applied  to  the  skin.  The  average  that  must 
intervene  between  the  two  points  in  order  that  they  may  be  felt 
as  two  is  as  follows  for  various  localities,  the  experiments  having 
been  made  several  years  ago  by  Weber : 

Tip  of  tongue 04  inch 

Palm  side  of  the  last  phalanx  of  the  finger 08  inch 

Red  part  of  lips 16  inch 

Tip  of  nose 25  inch 

Palm  side  of  the  second  phalanx  of  finger 28  inch 

White  of  lips 36  inch 

Cheek 44  inch 

Heel 88  inch 

Forehead  92  incli 

Back  of  hand 1.23  inch 

Knee-pan  1.44  inch 

Forearm  and  lower  leg 1 .58  inch 

Nape  of  neck 2.11  inch 

Middle  of  back,  upper  arm  and  thigh 2.75  inch 

When  several  touches  occur  simultaneously,  it  is  found  that 
there  is  still  more  confusion  in  locating  the  stimulations  of  the 


112  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

sense  of  touch.  It  might  be  interesting  in  this  connection  to  sum 
up  the  results  of  about  twenty-five  hundred  experiments,  which  I 
recently  made  on  the  fifteen  different  persons  at  different  times.* 
The  endeavor  of  this  study  was  (1)  to  discover  the  relative  sen- 
sitiveness of  different  portions  of  the  skin;  (2)  to  find  the  nature 
and  direction  of  the  errors  in  localization;  (3)  to  study  the  influ- 
ence of  attention  upon  the  localization  and  interpretation  of  sen- 
sations when  they  occur  simultaneously ;  (4)  to  examine  the  effect 
of  practice.  Can  the  skin  be  educated  to  greater  sensitiveness 
and  accuracy  in  localization? 

There  is  not  sufficient  space  to  describe  in  detail  the  methocl  of 
experiment  and  apparatus  employed .  Many  interesting  results 
were  gained,  among  which  the  following  are  the  most  important. 

First.  Indubitable  evidence  as  to  the  relative  sensitiveness  of 
the  skin. 

(a)  Skin  over  the  joints  is  much  more  sensitive  than  that  of 
other  localities  on  the  dermal  area.     Touches  on  the  joints  are 
always  more  correctly  localized  than  any  other.     • 

(b)  Touches  on  the  back  of  the  body  are  more  distinctly  felt, 
more  clearly  located,  and  therefore  better  localized  than  those  on 
the  front  part  of  the  body. 

(c)  Localization  of  these  touch  sensations  is  better  for  points 
not  on  the  median  line  than  for  those  that  are.    When  touches 
occur  on  the  median  line  of  the  body  but  34  per  cent,  are  cor- 
rectly localized,  while  at  other  localities  68  per  cent,  are  accu- 
rately located. 

(d)  On  the  left  side  of  the  body  we  do  not  localize  touches  so 
correctly  as  on  the  right  side,  that  is  if  we  are  right-handed. 

(e)  On  hairy  portions  of  the  skin  the  localization  is  better 
than  on  those  portions  not  covered  with  hair.    This  is  especially 
noticed  when  the  hairs  have  been  shaven,  as  in  one  instance  the 
skin  over  the  thighs  and  calves  (after  the  shaving  of  the  hairs) 
was  so  sensitive  as  to  vitiate  the  experiment,  because  the  sensa- 
tions received  at  these  localities  were  so  intense  and  pronounced 

*  These  experiments  are  described  in  detail  in  the  Journal  of  Nervous  and  Men- 
tal niseaoc,  New  York,  March,  1893. 


SENSATIOX.  113 

as  to  cause  the  mind  to  lose  track  of  the  sensations  at  the  other 
stimulated  portions  of  the  skin. 

(f)  The  parts  usually  covered  with  clothing  do  not  localize  so 
well  as  those  not  usually  so  covered. 

Second.  The  nature  and  direction  of  errors  in  localizing  touches. 
Out  of  every  100  errors  in  localizing  touches  in  these  experiments 
42  per  cent,  were  errors  of  extension;  that  is,  errors  in  which  the 
touch  was  located  at  a  point  nearer  the  extremities  of  the  limbs 
than  where  the  touch  actually  occurred.  To  illustrate,  a  person 
is  touched  on  the  forearm  just  below  the  elbow;  if  he  make  a 
mistake  at  all  he  will  locate  the  touch  lower  down  on  the  arm 
near  the  wrist,  rather  than  at  some  point  above  the  place  ac- 
tually touched.  The  average  amount  of  such  "  extension  "  errors 
was  4.36  inches. 

Third.  Attention  plays  a  most  important  part  in  the  locali- 
zation of  these  touch  stimulations. 

Fourth.    The  effect  of  practice  is  very  marked. 

Fifth.  Fusion  of  stimulations  into  one  touch  sensation.  Two 
or  more  touches  are  often  fused  into  one  single  sensation,  and 
this  one  sensation  localized  at  a  point  quite  removed  from  either 
of  those  at  which  the  stimulations  were  actually  received.  For 
example,  two  touches,  one  at  the  top  of  the  right  shoulder  and 
the  other  at  the  tip  of  the  right  shoulder  blade  were  quickly  fused 
into  one  sensation,  localized  as  coming  from  a  single  point  mid- 
way between  the  two  places  actually  touched. 

Sixth.  Diffusion.  There  were  also  results  diametrically  opposed 
to  the  case  of  fusion  just  cited.  Thus  one  subject,  being  touched 
by  a  single  cork  at  a  point  directly  under  the  armpit,  indicated 
that  he  had  been  touched  at  two  localities  about  four  inches 
apart,  when  there  was  really  but  one  point  touched. 

A  general  rule  might  be  laid  down;  it  is  this:  The  localizing 
power  is  delicate  in  proportion  as  the  skin  covers  a,  more  movable 
part  of  the  body,  andis  also  more  acute  when  the  pressure  stimu- 
lation is  just  strong  enough  to  cause  an  appreciable  sensation 
than  when  it  is  more  powerfully  impressed. 

Mr.  H.,  who,  in  the  fall  of  1892,  was  the  "coach"  of  a  univer- 

L.  P.-8 


11.4  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

sity  foot-ball  team,  had  his  left  forearm  broken  in  a  hotly  con- 
tested game  while  playingwith  his  eleven  against  that  of  another 
institution.  The  surgeon  who  was  called  did  his  work  in  such  a 
bungling  manner  that  after  the  bones  had  begun  to  knit  the  arm 
had  to  be  broken  over  again  in  order  to  set  it  properly.  To 
keep  it  in  the  correct  position  a  plaster  cast  was  made  which 
held  it  firmly.  This  plaster-of-paris  case  extended  from  the 
knuckles  to  a  point  above  the  elbow.  After  three  months  the 
case  and  bandage  were  removed.  Of  course  during  the  entire 
period  when  incased  in  the  plaster,  the  forearm  had  not  been 
moved  either  at  the  wrist  or  elbow.  I  then  endeavored  to  test 
the  sensibility  of  the  skin  on  this  arm  which  had  not  been  moved 
for  so  long  a  time.  To  do  this,  I  applied  the  points  of  a  pair  of 
dividers  or  compasses  which  were  separated  more  or  less  widely 
as  mentioned  in  certain  experiments  above.  The  forearm  was 
divided  into  four  different  areas  for  purposes  of  more  accurate 
comparison  with  the  sensibility  of  the  skin  on  the  unin- 
jured right  forearm  of  the  same  person.  Without  going  into 
detail,  it  should  be  stated  that  on  the  left  forearm  —  the  one  so 
long  immovable,  when  the  two  points  touching  the  skin  at  a 
given  region  were  separated  by  as  much  as  55  millimeters  they 
were  felt  as  one  instead  of  two,  while  on  the  right  forearm  at  the 
same  place  they  would  only  have  to  be  about  20  millimeters 
apart  in  order  to  be  perceived  as  two.  On  the  back  of  the 
"lame"  arm  at  a  different  locality  than  that  just  mentioned,  it 
was  found  that  even  when  the  two  points  of  the  dividers  were 
75  and  80  millimeters  apart,  they  were  felt  as  one,  while  at  a 
corresponding  locality  on  the  right  arm  the  skin  was  so  sensi' 
tive  that  points  but  17  millimeters  apart  would  be  felt  as  two- 
It  must  be  also  observed  that  this  particular  person  had  always 
previously  been,  with  reference  to  a  large  number  of  activities, 
practically  ambidextrous— indeed,  he  never  had  to  favor  the  lefl 
arm  at  all.  In  his  position  as  gymnasium  instructor  he  could 
(before  the  accident)  manipulate  the  dumb  bells,  Indian  clubs, 
play  base  ball,  hand  ball,  and  the  like  with  the  left  hand  just  a* 
well  as  with  the  right.  It  would  seem,  then,  that  the  sensibility 


SENSATION.  115 

of  the  skin  over  the  injured  forearm  was  lost  simply  because  that 
member  was  for  so  long  a  time  necessarily  immovable.  This 
has  an  important  bearing  on  the  above-mentioned  principle,  to 
the  effect  that  "  the  localizing  power  is  delicate  in  proportion  as 
the  skin  covers  a  movable  part  of  the  body." 

Again,  filled  space  is  as  a  rule  underestimated  by  the  skin.  A 
solid  line,  like  the  back  of  a  knife-blade,  will  feel  shorter  than  sev- 
eral points  arranged  in  a  similar  straight  line  of  the  same  length 
as  the  solid  line.  An  interesting  experiment  for  you  to  perform 
is  to  take  a  small  wooden  rod  and  stick  into  it  a  straight  row  of 
five  pins  separated  from  each  other  by  one-half  of  an  inch.  In 
another  such  a  wooden  rod  set  up  two  pins  one  and  one-half 
inches  apart.  Apply  them  to  the  arm  one  after  the  other.  You 
will  find  that  the  two  inches  of  space  occupied  by  the  five  pins 
will  seem  less  than  the  one  and  one-half  inches  between  the  two 
pins. 

We  are  also  subject  to  great  confusion  in  our  judgment  of  mo- 
Mon  on  the  skin.  If  you  select  a  convenient  area  on  the  dermal 
surface— the  forearm,  for  example— and  move  a  pencil-point  over 
the  skin,  you  will  observe  that  you  can  tell  that  the  point  is  mov- 
ing before  you  can  tell  the  direction  in  which  it  is  moving.  A 
common  and  persistent  illusion  somewhat  related  to  the  above 
experiment  may  be  experienced  if  you  touch  the  forehead  with 
the  index  finger  (keeping  the  finger  motionless)  and  move  the 
forehead  from  side  to  side;  you  will  find  that  the  motion  will  be 
attributed  to  the  finger  rather  than  to  the  forehead.  This  is  an 
irresistible  sensation  of  which  one  cannot  rid  himself.  Perhaps 
you  have  already  tried  the  old-time  experiment  of  Aristotle,  in 
which  you  merely  cross  the  middle  finger  over  the  index  finger  in 
such  a  way  as  to  bring  the  middle  finger  on  the  thumb  side  of  the 
index  finger.  Inserting  between  the  two  a  pea,  bullet,  or  other 
small  object,  you  perceive  a  more  or  less  distinct  sensation  of  two 
objects  instead  of  the  one  actually  present. 

Furthermore,  you  will  always  find  that  active  touch  (touch 
with  movement)  gives  quite  a  different  sensation  thanmeresimple 
contact  or  passive  touch.  It  is  also  more  discriminative.  The 


116  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

carpenter  who  desires  to  tell  whether  the  board  is  planed  smoothly 
or  not,  does  not  simply  lay  his  hand  on  the  board,  but  rubs  it 
over  the  surface,  the  smoothness  of  which  he  desires  to  judge. 
Likewise  as  to  the  grinder  of  lenses  for  optical  instruments.  Com- 
pare for  yourself  the  sensation  received  from  merely  resting  the 
tip  of  the  finger  on  the  rough  surface  of  a  piece  of  sandpaper,  or 
even  a  rough  book  cover,  with  the  sensation  you  receive  when 
you  move  the  finger  over  such  a  surface.  The  bank  teller  cannot 
tell  a  counterfeit  five-dollar  bill  or  the  spurious  lead  coin  by 
simply  touching  it  passively.  He  rubs  it  between  his  fingers,  or 
rubs  his  fingers  over  it.  The  merchant  in  buying  cloth  depends 
largely  upon  the  "feel  of  it,"  as  he  rubs  it  between  his  thumb  and 
finger  to  determine  the  quality  of  its  texture.  You  probably  do 
the  same  thing  in  comparing  several  varieties  of  writing  paper 
as  to  their  smoothness  and  thickness. 

Sergi,  the  Italian  Psychologist,  and  others  have  made  some 
extended  experiments  with  reference  to  ascertaining  theacuteness 
of  the  skin's  power  in  making  time  discriminations  when  a  num- 
ber of  stimulations  follow  in  close  succession.  In  other  words, 
his  attempt  was  an  endeavor  to  find  how  much  of  an  interval 
there  must  be  between  successive  touch  stimulations  to  prevent 
their  being  fused  into  one  continuous  sensation.  As  apparatus 
he  used  six  tuning  forks,  each  of  which  could  be  set  into  vibra- 
tion electrically,  and  which  were,  respectively,  capable  of  30, 100, 
250,435,500  and  1,000  vibrations  per  second.  Various  locations 
on  the  skin  are  then  brought  into  direct  contact  with  each  of  these 
forks  after  they  are  set  into  vibration.  After  a  large  number  of 
careful  tests,  Sergi  finds  that  different  portions  of  the  dermal 
surface  are  by  no  means  equally  capable  of  perceiving  successive 
stimulations  and  of  making  time  discriminations.  He  did  find 
some  localities  exceedingly  sensitive  —  e.  g.,  the  tips  of  the  fingers 
where  the  beats  of  the  fork  do  not  blend  into  a  continuous  sen- 
sation of  touch,  even  when  the  vibrations  are  1,000  or  more  a 
second. 


LESSON  X. 
SENSATION  (CONTINUED). 

THE  MUSCLE  SENSE. 

BY  muscular  sensations  are  meant  all  those  sensations  which 
arise  from  the  varying  condition  of  the  muscles  whether  in  action 
or  at  rest ;  therefore  they  depend  upon  the  contraction  and  re- 
laxation of  the  muscular  fibers  or  the  varying  relative  position 
of  the  muscles.  When  we  slowly  stretch  or  violently  jerk  the  arm, 
when  we  snap  the  finger,  when  we  rotate  the  wrist,  when  we  tread 
or  kick  with  the  foot,  when  we  strain  and  tug  with  the  whole 
body  to  lift  a  heavy  weight  or  push  against  a  resisting  obstacle, 
we  experience  a  corresponding  variety  of  muscle  sensations. 

The  muscle  sense  is  among  the  first,  if  not  itself  the  very  first, 
to  furnish  data  by  means  of  which  the  child  becomes  able  to  dis- 
tinguish himself  —  his  body  —  from  the  rest  of  the  material  uni- 
verse. Through  a  large  variety  of  movements  the  infant  first 
explores  every  part  of  the  organism,  and  as  a  result  derives  that 
standard  by  which  he  measures  the  material  world  without.  You 
see,  then,  by  the  expression  "muscular  sensation  '^is  meant  those 
feelings  of  which  we  are  conscious  when  we  voluntarily  exercise  or 
refrain  from  exercising  our  muscles. 

While  the  real  muscular  sensations  would  comprise  those  of 
pain,  effort,  fatigue  and  the  like,  it  should  be  observed  that  the 
term  "  muscle  sense  "  has  come  to  receive  a  more  restricted,  defi- 
niteand  special  meaning  in  Psychology,  and  it  is  now  used  to  des- 
ignate more  particularly  that  sense  by  which  lifted  weights  are  per- 
ceived. For  experiments  upon  sensations  belonging  to  this  class, 
it  is  necessary  to  have  a  series  of  weights  for  the  purpose  of  test- 
ing one's  discriminative  ability  with  reference  to  this  special 
sense.  The  most  available  weights  for  such  purposes  are  made 
by  loading  paper  gunshells  with  shot.  A  convenient  series  would 

(117) 


118  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

consist  of  the  following  weights:  100,  101,  102,  102.2,  102.5, 
103  and  103.4  grams.  Also  a  carefully  graduated  series  ol 
smaller  weights  beginning  with  a  weight  of  ten  grams,  and  run- 
ning as  high  as  fifteen  grams.  The  experiment  should  be  madg 
something  as  follows:  Let  the  person  whose  discriminative  abil- 
ity for  lifted  weights  you  wish  to  test,  stand  at  a  table  of  conven- 
ient height.  He  should  be  blindfolded.  Place  within  easy  reach 
of  his  right  hand  and  near  together  two  weights,  one  of  which 
should  be  the  standard  weight  of  100  grams,  and  the  other  a 
weight  to  be  compared  with  it,  either  one  that  is  equal,  heavier 
or  lighter.  Let  the  subject  lift  them  one  after  the  other,  being 
careful  that  he  lift  them  the  same  way,  to  the  same  height  and  at 
the  same  rate,  giving  a  decision  as  to  which  of  the  weights  he 
thinks  is  the  heavier  or  the  lighter.  If  he  thinks  the  two  of  equal 
weight,  record  this  judgment  also.  The  fact  of  the  matter  is 
that  when  the  two  are  of  equal  weight  he  will  be  apt  to  say  that 
the  second  one  lifted  is  the  heavier.  The  difference  between  the 
two  weights  must  be  considerable  if  it  is  to  be  perceived.  If  we 
should  close  our  eyes  and  a  friend  should  lay  a  weight  of  300 
grams,  then  one  of  312  grams,  on  our  hand  and  we  are  called 
upon  to  state  which  of  the  two  is  the  heavier  it  would  be  seen 
that  the  additional  weight  of  twelve  grams  more  than  the  orig- 
inal 300  grams  is  so  small  that  the  difference  is  not  constantly 
perceived  with^  thoroughgoing  certainty.  Fechner,  the  first  to 
innovate  this  test,  found  that  in  one  hundred  such  trials  as  the 
one  just  indicated,  in  which  sometimes  the  lighter  and  sometimee 
the  heavier  weight  was  first  lifted,  the  correct  answer  was  given 
sixty  times.  Therefore  the  number  of  correct  cases  amounted  to 
60  per  cent. 

Now  a  second  series  of  trials  is  made,  the  initial  weight  being 
600  grams,  the  additional  weight  remaining  12  grams  for  the 
time  being.  It  is  then  s.oon  found  that  the  number  of  false  esti- 
mates has  been  greatly  augmented,  the  number  of  correct  cases 
being  not  more  than  4.0  percent.  In  order  to  attain  60  per  cent, 
of  correct  cases,  as  in  the  case  of  300  grams  and  312  grams,  we 
have  to  raise  the  additional  weight  to  24  grams  if  our  initial 


SENSATION.  119 

weight  remain  600  grams.  If  the  beginning  weight  is  doubled, 
the  additional  weight  must  also  be  doubled  in  order  that  the 
probability  of  a  correct  discriminative  judgment  remain  con- 
stant. 

Closely  allied  with  the  muscular  sensations  are  what  is  known 
as  the  organic  sensations.  When  the  stomach,  lungs,  heart  and 
other  visceral  organs  are  entirely  healthy  and  their  functions  are 
normally  performed,  they  are  attended  with  no  very  positive  or 
distinct  sensations.  If,  however,  they  be  injured  or  diseased, 
very  clearly  recognized  disturbing  and  unpleasant  sensations  re- 
sult. The  hale,  hearty,  healthy  man  does  not  know  that  he  has 
a  stomach;  the  dyspeptic  person  hardly  knows  that  he  has  any- 
thing else.  These  organic  sensations  are  often  blended  with  the 
muscular,  and  are  experienced  in  constant  connection  with  nor- 
mal or  abnormal  muscular  sensations. 

But  more  intimately  related  to  the  muscular  than  are  these 
organic  sensations  are  those  of  the  joints  and  ten  dons— sensa- 
tions, which  are  often  experienced  in  the  passive  motion  of  the 
various  bodily  members,  especially  brought  into  prominence  in 
the  flexion  of  the  elbow.  'The  surfaces  of  the  joints  are  organs 
which  become  intensely  painful  when  the  least  bit  inflamed.  The 
motion  of  the  articulated  joints  upon  each  other  gives  rise  to  a 
peculiar  sensation.  To  this  sensation  is  due  the  perception  we 
have  of  the  position  of  our  limbs  at  a  given  moment.  If  these 
joint  surfaces  are  rendered  anaesthetic  the  perception  of  the 
movement,  and  consequently  the  position  of  the  limbs,  becomes 
exceedingly  obtuse.  If  you  place  the  forearm  of  a  person  flat  upon 
a  hinged  board  and  raise  one  end  of  the  board  so  that  the  fore- 
arm is  slowly  and  gradually  elevated,  and  require  the  person  to 
pronounce  when  he  first  perceives  the  motion  of  his  forearm,  it 
will  be  found  that  the  chief  data  upon  which  he  bases  his  judg- 
ment is  the  peculiar  sensation  of  motion  which  he  localizes  in 
the  elbow  joint.  At  least  this  is  what  happens  with  healthy 
persons  in  normal  condition.  But  when  the  feelings  of  such  pas- 
sive movements  as  well  as  other  sensations  which  furnish  us  a 
clue  to  the  position  of  our  limbs  are  lacking,  we  get  such  results 


120  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

as  are  related  by  Professor  Strumpell  of  his  wonderful  ansesthe- 
sic  boy,  whose  only  sources  of  sensation  were  the  right  eye  and 
left  ear.  The  principal  features  of  the  case  are  thus  quoted  by 
Professor  Jatnes  :  *  "  Passive  movements  could  be  imprinted  on 
all  the  extremities  to  the  greatest  extent,  without  attracting  the 
patient's  notice.  Only  in  violent  forced  hyperextension  of  the 
joints,  especially  of  the  knees,  there  arose  a  dull  vague  feeling  of 
strain,  but  this  was  seldom  precisely  localized.  We  have  often, 
after  bandaging  the  eyes  of  the  patient,  carried  him  about  the 
room,  laid  him  on  a  table,  given  to  his  arms  and  legs  the  most 
fantastic  and  apparently  the  most  inconvenient  attitudes  with- 
out his  having  a  suspicion  of  it.  The  expression  of  astonishment 
in  his  face,  when  all  at  once  the  removal  of  the  handkerchief 
revealed  his  situation,  is  indescribable  in  words.  Only  when  his 
head  was  made  to  hang  away  down  he  immediately  spoke  of 
dizziness,  but  could  not  assign  its  ground.  Later  he  sometimes 
inferred  from  the  sounds  connected  with  the  manipulation  that 
something  special  was  being  done  with  him.  .  .  .  He  had  no 
feelings  of  muscular  fatigue.  If,  with  his  eyes  shut,  we  told  him 
to  raise  his  arm  and  keep  it  up,  he  did  so  without  trouble.  After 
one  or  two  minutes,  however,  the  arm  began  to  tremble  and 
sink  without  his  being  a  ware  of  it.  He  asserted  still  his  ability  to 
keep  it  up.  .  .  .  Passively  holding  still  his  fingers  did  not 
affect  him.  He  thought  constantly  that  he  opened  and  shut  his 
hand,  whereas  it  was  really  fixed."  Goldscheider  found  that  a 
swing  of  the  arm,  amounting  to  .22°  to  .42°,  is  sensibly  perceived 
in  the  shoulder  joint.  Such  small  displacements  as  these  can  hardly 
be  detected  by  the  eye.  Of  course  the  velocity  with  which  the  mem- 
ber is  moved  plays  an  important  part.  The  minimum  velocity  for 
the  shoulder  joint  has  been  found  to  be  about  .3°  in  a  second  of 
time.  All  these  facts  prove  that  the  joint  surfaces  constitute  the 
chief  seat  of  the  impressions  by  which  the  movements  and  posi- 
tion of  our  bodily  members  are  immediately  perceived. 

Mention  must  also  be  made  of  the  sensations  of  resistance.  To 

*William  James.    Psychology— Briefer  Course.    New  York,  1892.    The  Gemma 
account  is  not  in  our  possession. 


SENSATION. 


121 


demonstrate  what  is  meant  let  us  take  a  five-pound  weight  to 
which  is  attached  a  strong  piece  of  ordinary  string.  With  the 
arm  extended  hold  the  weight  by  the  string  so  that  it  hangs  just 
a  few  inches  above  the  floor.  Lower  the  weight  rather  rapidly 
until  it  strikes  the  floor.  Just  as  it  strikes,  a  sensation  of  resist- 
ance to  further  motion  is  clearly  perceived. 

We  now  come  to  speak  of  those  sensations  by  means  of  which 
we  recognize  the  position  of  the  body  as  a  whole.    That  there  arc 


such  sensations  can  be  very  easily  verified  by  a  simple  experiment. 
The  most  clear  demonstration  occurs  in  connection  with  the  "tilt- 
ing board  "  shown  in  the  cut.  (See  Fig.  17.)  This  consists  of  a 
board  seven  feet  long  and  two  feet  wide  balanced  over  a  support 
somewhat  resembling  a  sawhorse.  At  one  end  there  is  a  footboard 
secure  enough  to  bear  the  weight  of  a  man  when  the  tilting  board 
is  in  a  vertical  position .  At  the  other  end  should  be  attached  a 
plumb-line  and  a  semicircular  scale  so  adjusted  that  the  inclina- 
tion of  the  tilting  board  can  be  read  off  at  any  moment.  To  pre- 


122  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

vent  the  person  from  falling  when  the  head  is  downward,  shoul- 
der and  body  straps  are  provided  which  securely  bind  him  to  the 
board.  Cause  the  person  who  is  to  serve  as  subject  in  this  exper- 
iment to  place  himself  on  the  tilting  board  and  have  him  close 
his  eyes.  Begin  with  the  board  vertical,  his  head  up.  On  ques- 
tioning him  you  will  find  that  he  will  probably  announce  that  he 
is  leaning  slightly  forward.  Tilt  him  slowly  backward  and  re- 
quire him  to  announce  when  he  is  at  an  angle  of  45°  from  the 
vertical,  when  at  an  angle  of  90°,  and  when  at  an  angle  of  180°. 
In  most  cases  the  subject  will  probably  say  that  he  is  vertical, 
head  downward,  when  he  is  from  30°  to  60°  from  the  designated 
position. 

In  this  connection  reference  must  be  made  to  the  sensations  of 
rotation.  The  nature  of  these  sensations  is  also  best  determined 
by  appeal  to  actual  experiment.  Some  of  these  experiments  can 
be  performed  by  twisting  the  rope  of  an  ordinary  swing  in  which 
a  person  is  seated.  It  is  better,  however,  to  have  a  board  laid 
across  a  screw  stool  or  ordinary  rotating  office  chair  without  a 
back ;  seat  the  person  and  rotate  him  rapidly  for  about  half  a 
turn,  then  stop  him  suddenly.  A  distinct  sensation  of  rotation 
in  the  opposite  direction  will  be  clearly  perceived.  This  experi- 
ment must  be  performed  with  the  eyes  closed,  for  if  the  eyes  be 
opened,  the  sensation  immediately  ceases.  Close  the  eyes  again 
and  it  returns.  When  a  person  is  turned  in  one  direction  and 
then  in  the  other  for  quite  a  little  period  of  time  arid  for  different 
distances,  he  will  finally  lose  all  knowledge  of  direction  in  which 
he  is  subsequently  rotated.  These  totally  wrong  judgments  with 
reference  to  the  direction  of  rotation  are  quite  common,  and  are 
made  use  of  in  a  number  of  children's  games.  The  "donkey 
game  "  is  a  familiar  example.  A  figure  of  a  donkey  minus  a  tail 
is  cut  out  of  colored  paper  and  fastened  to  a  sheet  or  screen  hung 
up  on  the  wall  at  one  end  of  a  room.  Each  member  of  the  company 
is  then  required  to  locate  the  proper  place  for  the  tail  standing  at 
the  opposite  end  of  the  room  with  his  eyes  open.  Then  he  is 
blindfolded,  turned  about  by  another  person,  first  in  one  direc- 
tion, then  in  the  other,  and  finally  told  to  pin  the  Detached  ta.il  ? 


SENSATION.  123 

which  has  been  cut  out  separately,  to  the  donkey  at  what  he 
thinks  is  the  proper  place.  Much  merriment  is  caused  by  the 
striking  mistakes  with  reference  to  direction  and  locality. 

It  ought  also  to  be  mentioned  here  that  deaf  and  dumb  per- 
sons are,  as  a  rule,  quite  insusceptible  of  being  made  dizzy  by  ro- 
tation. The  semicircular  canals  located  in  the  labyrinth  of  the 
ear  are,  as  it  were,  six  little  spirit  levels,  which  seem  calculated 
to  be  organs  of  the  sense  of  rotation. 


LESSON  XI. 

SENSATION  (CONTINUED). 
VISION. 

THE  organ  of  vision  is  the  eye.  It  is  not  necessary  in  this 
place  to  give  a  detailed  description  of  the  structure  of  the  eye. 
Such  a  description  can  be  found  in  any  book  on  anatomy.  It  is, 
however,  always  an  interesting  observation  for  one  to  verify 
such  descriptions  by  dissection  of  the  eye  of  a  beef  or  sheep.  For 
such  examination  the  specimen  should  be  first  frozen  or  hardened 
in  alcohol. 

The  following  general  points  in  reference  to  the  eye's  structure 
ought,  however,  be  noticed  in  passing.  With  the  exception  of  the 
ear,  the  eye  is  by  far  the  most  complicated  end  organ  of  sense. 
The  eye  is  an  optical  instrument,  with  a  self-adjusting  lens,  and 
supporting,  on  its  inner  circular  wall,  a  delicate  membrane  of 
nervou  s  matter  which  acts  as  the  sensitive  plate  of  the  camera 
(for  such  the  eye  is)  on  which  the  image  is  formed.  On  examin- 
ing the  eye  you  find  it  to  be  a  flattish  sphere  formed  by  an  outer 
tough  membrane  which  incloses  a  nervous  surface  and  refracting 
media.  The  parts  of  the  eye  are  shown  in  the  schematic  draw- 
ing of  Gegenbaur  (Fig.  18). 

Of  the  three  coats  of  the  eye  the  inner  one  (retina)  is  by  far 
the  most  significant.  As  stated  above,  it  is  the  sensitive  plate, 
and  is  a  delicate  membrane  consisting  of  ten  layers.  Of  these 
layers,  the  structure  of  the  ninth  (counting  from  the  inner  sur- 
face)—  the  layer  of  the  rods  and  cones  —  is  the  most  interesting. 
It  consists  of  a  multitude  of  elongated  bodies  arranged  side  by 
side  in  a  sort  of  mosaic.  These  bodies  are  of  two  kinds ;  one, 
the  cylindrical  "rods,"  the  others,  more  flask-shaped,  are 
called  "  cones."  The  rods  are  longer  than  the  cones.  In  the 
adult  human  eye  they  are  about  g-^  of  an  inch  in  length.  It  is  a 
(124) 


SENSATION. 


125 


peculiar  fact  that  these  end  organs  are  not  pointed  forward  to- 
ward the  light  as  it  streams  through  the  pupil,  but  backward 
toward  the  outer  or  sclerotic  coat.  The  cones  seem  to  be  the 
most  sensitive  to  light.  Certain  it  is  that  in  the  center  of  the  eye 


FIGURE  18.— Horizontal  section  through  the  left  eye. 

Gegenbaur.) 


TINA 
HOROID 
SCLEROTIC 


(Schematic,  from 


only  cones  appear,  and  they  are  exceedingly  numerous,  over 
1,000,000  being  found  in  a  TJ7  inch  square. 

The  optic  nerve  fibers  cannot  be  directly  stimulated  by  light. 
The  place  on  the  retina  where  the  optic  nerve  enters  the  eye  is  in 


126  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

fact  entirely  blind,  because  nothing  but  fibers  (and  no  rods  and 
cones)  exist  there.  This  spot  is  wanting  in  all  nervous  elements 
sensitive  to  light.  To  prove  the  existence  of  the  blind  spot,  close 
the  right  eye  and  look  steadily  with  the  left  at  the  cross  in  Fig. 
19,  holding  the  book  in  front  of  the  face,  moving  it  to  and  fro. 
At  about  one  foot  from  the  face  the  black  disk  entirely  disap- 
pears ;  when  nearer  than  this  or  farther  from  the  face  it  is  seen. 
In  this  simple  experiment  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  keep  the 
left  eye  focused  on  the  cross.  The  blind  spot  is  about  fa  of  an 
inch  long  in  the  average  human  eye. 

Aside  from  the  blind  spot  the  sensibility  of  the  eye  varies 
greatly.  The  place  of  clearest  vision  is  the  "  yellow  spot "  which 
is  oval  in  shape,  with  a  central  depression  called  the  fovea.  This 
yellow  spot  is  about  1-16  of  an  inch  in  length  and  lies  at  a 


FIGURE  19. 

tance  of  1-6  of  ari  inch  from  the  middle  of  the  blind  spot.  As  Di . 
Sanford  suggests,  the  yellow  spot  may  be  projected  and  seen  in 
the  following  manner :  Close  the  eyes  for  about  thirty  seconds 
and  then  look  with  one  of  them  through  a  flat-sided  bottle,  con- 
taining a  saturated  solution  of  chrome  alum,  at  the  clear  sky.  In 
the  blue-green  solution  of  the  chrome  alum  a  rose-colored  spot 
will  be  seen  which  corresponds  to  the  yellow  spot  of  the  eye. 

We  see  single  with  two  eyes,  just  as  we  hear  single  with  two 
ears  and  smell  single  with  two  nostrils.  We  can,  however,  see 
double  under  certain  conditions,  though  we  can  never  hear  double 
or  smell  double.  An  easy  and  clear  demonstration  of  this  fact  is 
to  roll  a  sheet  of  paper  so  as  to  have  a  tube  an  inch  or  two  in 
diameter  and  a  foot  long.  Keep  both  eyes  open,  and  hold  with 
your  right  hand  one  end  of  the  tube  to  your  right  eye  (with 


SENSATION.  127 

which  you  are  to  look  through  the  tube)  to  restrict  its  field,  and 
leave  the  left  eye  unrestricted  as  to  its  field  of  vision.  Place  the 
open  left  hand  (palm  side  toward  you)  against  the  left  side  of 
the  tube  directly  in  the  field  of  vision  for  the  left  eye.  With  both 
eyes  look  straight  ahead.  With  your  right  eye  you  see  the  hole 
of  the  tube  and  with  the  left  you  see  your  hand .  Your  mind  super- 
imposes the  image  of  the  one  on  that  of  the  other,  consequently 
you  see  your  hand  with  a  hole  in  it  just  the  diameter  of  the  tube. 
Again,  take  the  same  tube  an-d  hold  it  over  one  eye  and  then  with 
both  eyes  look  at  a  finely  figured  wall  paper  or  carpet.  To  the  eye 
whose  retinal  field  is  restricted  by  the  tube  the  object  looked  at 
will  appear  further  away  than  it  does  to  the  other  eye.  Another 


FIGURE  20. 

interesting  experiment  in  this  direction  would  be  for  the  reader 
to  gaze  fixedly  at  Fig.  20  with  the  black  spots  directly  in  front 
of  the  right  and  left  eyes,  respectively.  After  looking  at  it  for 
a  little  time,  as  if  the  paper  were  at  an  infinite  distance,  or  as  if 
he  were  looking  through  it,  the  reader  will  see  the  two  black  dots 
fuse  together  and  combine  into  one.  This  combined  spot  is  located 
directly  in  front  of  his  nose  on  a  line  between  the  two  actual  spots. 
This  combined  spot  results  from  seeing  the  two  spots  in  front  of 
each  eye  with  the  same  part  of  the  fovea. 

If  instead  of  two  identical  spots  we  use  two  different  figures  or 
two  differently-colored  spots  or  areas  as  objects  for  the  same  two 
fovea  to  focus  upon,  they  cannot  appear  as  a  single  object  but  al- 
ternately displace  each  other  from  view.  This  is  the  phenomenon 


128  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

known  as  retinal  rivalry.  If  one  looks  with  each  eyeupon  a  differ- 
ent image,  as  in  Fig.  21,  sometimes  the  one  sometimes  the  other 
will  be  perceived.  A  piece  of  cardboard  or  paper  ought  to  be 
placed  in  a  vertical  position  on  the  middle  dividing  line  so  as  to 
confine  the  vision  of  each  eye  to  the  figure  or  system  of  lines  imme- 
diately in  front  of  it.  As  Helmholtz  puts  it,  we  find  that  we  are 
able  "to  attend  voluntarily  now  to  one  and  now  to  the  other  sys- 
tem of  lines ;  and  then  that  system  remains  visible  alone  for  a  cer- 
tain time,  while  the  other  entirely  vanishes.  This  happens,  for  ex- 
ample, if  one  attempts  to  count  the  lines  first  of  one  and  then  of 


FIGURE  21. 

the  other  system ;  but  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  chain  the  atten- 
tion down  to  either  one  of  the  systems,  for  long,"  etc. 

That  the  rods  and  cones  of  the  retina  are  arranged  in  a  mosaic 
is  indicated  in  Bergman's  experiment.  Place  the  system  of  lines 
in  the  left  portion  of  Fig.  22  in  a  good  light  and  gaze  fixedly 
at  it  from  a  distance  of  about  5  feet.  You  will  notice  an  appar- 
ent bending  of  the  lines,  as  shown  in  the  portion  A,  of  the  same 
figure.  This  is,  of  course,  explicable  on  the  basis  of  the  mosaic 
arrangement.  The  retinal  elements  on  which  one  of  the  white 
lines  happens  to  fall  are  stimulated  according  as  they  are  more 
or  less  touched,  giving  rise  to  corresponding  sensations. 


SENSATION. 


129 


If,  after  looking  intently  at  any  bright  object  with  a  reasona- 
bly clear  outline,  we  close  our  eyes,  it  is  found  that  an  image  of 
the  object  remains  for  some  time  and  only  fades  out  of  sight 
gradually.  This  phenomenon  is  known  by  the  name  of  "  after- 
image." After-images  in  which  the  arrangement  of  light  and 
shade  found  in  the  original  object  is  preserved  are  called  posi- 
tive after-images — i.  e.,  the  bright  and  dark  parts  correspond  to 
those  of  the  original  object.  Those  after-images  in  which  this 
relation  is  reversed  are  called  negative  after-images.  The  posi- 
tive after-image  has  a  color  like  that  of  the  original  object.  In 
the  negative  the  opposite  or  complementary  colors  are  evoked. 


FIGUEE  22. 


If  some  morning  you  look  steadily  for  a  minute  at  the  win- 
dow of  your  room  and  then  direct  your  eyes  so  as  to  look  on  a 
whited  wall  or  screen  the  dark  parts  of  the  window  will  appear 
light,  and  vice  versa.  The  arrangement  of  light  and  shade  are 
here  reversed  just  as  in  a  photographic  negative.  If  we  look  at 
a  green  surface  for  some  time  and  then  fix  the  eye  upon  a  white 
sheet  of  paper  or  screen  we  find  that  the  latter  will  contain  an 
image  of  red  color  corresponding  in  size  and  outline  to  the  orig- 
inal green  surface.  For  example,  if  you  look  for  a  moment  at  a 
small  green  circle  and  then  fix  your  eyes  upon  the  white  surface 
you  will  see  within  the  bounds  of  the  white  surface  a  red  circle  as 
the  negative  after-image.  Negative  after-images  are  really  a 

L.  P.— 9 


130  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

form  of  retinal  fatigue,  but  the  positive  are  in  all  probability 
due  to  the  inertia  of  the  retina. 

Bright  surfaces  are  always  enlarged  at  the  expense  of  dark 
surfaces  by  which  they  may  happen  to  be  surrounded ;  this  is 
called  the  phenomenon  of  irradiation.  With  Fig.  23  in  a  good 
light,  notice  that  the  white  squares  seem  larger  than  the  black, 
though  they  are  actually  of  the  same  size. 

In  the  same  connection  it  should  be  mentioned  that  color  in- 
fluences the  apparent  size  of  an  object.  Every  woman  knows  that 
her  hand  looks  smaller  in  a  black  than  in  a  white  glove.  The  so- 
ciety belle  declines  to  wear  a  white  slipper  to  the  ball  or  german 
because  it  makes  her  foot  appear  larger  and  less  dainty  than 


FIGURE  23. 

would  a  red  slipper.  The  gray  shades  of  suiting  make  a  man  ap- 
pear larger  than  when  he  wears  a  soft  black.  You  have  observed 
the  same  thing  with  reference  to  the  colors  of  dwellings.  A  house 
painted  a  gray  or  light  stone  color  will  seem  larger  and  nearer  to 
the  street  (if  one  is  looking  at  it  from  that  point  of  view)  than  it 
would  if  painted  any  other  color. 

We  now  come  to  speak  of  the  phenomenon  of  color  blindness. 
With  certain  persons  certain  defects  of  vision  exist  of  such  a  na- 
ture that  they  are  unable  to  distinguish  some  of  the  color  shades. 
Such  individuals  are  said  to  be  "color  blind."  A  little  more  than 
one  hundred  years  ago  it  was  discovered  that  there  were  persons 
who  could  not  distinguish  certain  colors.  The  first  case  recorded 
was  that  of  John  Dalton,the  celebrated  English  chemist.  The 


SENSATION.  131 

description  he  made  of  his  defect  was  widely  read  and  attracted 
general  notice.  The  defect  itself  was  named  "  Daltonism."  About 
four  per  cent,  of  persons,  or  one  in  every  twenty-five,  are  color 
blind. 

This  phenomenon  is  quite  frequently  met  with  among  railroad 
men,  especially  locomotive  engineers,  a  number  of  whom  are 
blind  to  the  red  rays.  That  they  are  "red  blind"  is  probably 
due  to  the  fact  that  in  their  long  apprenticeship  as  firemen  their 
eyes  became  over-stimulated  by  the  red  rays  of  the  glaring  fur- 
nace grates,  so  that  those  elements  of  the  retina  whose  function  it 
is  to  perceive  red  have  simply  been  so  fatigued  and"  worn  out" 
that  they  cannot  "  take  up  the  burden  of  life  again."  Holmgren's 
method  of  testing  color  blindness  is  the  one  ordinarily  employed. 
Spread  the  variously  colored  worsteds  on  a  white  cloth  in  good 
daylight.  Select  any  one  distinct  color — e.  g.,  a  light  blue — and  ask 
the  person  serving  as  subject  to  select  from  the  mass  of  worsteds 
all  the  other  skeins  that  seem  to  him  to  be  the  same  in  color  as 
the  standard  you  have  already  laid  to  one  side.  If  he  makes 
errors  in  putting  pink,  gray,  green,  buff,  lavender, lilac,  magenta, 
etc.,  with  the  blue  skein  you  selected,  he  is  evidently  color  blind. 
Red  blindness  is  most  frequently  met  with,  while  violet  blindness 
is  exceedingly  rare. 

A  person  red  blind  sees  black  and  white  and  their  mixture, 
which  makes  gray,  much  the  same  as  others  do.  He  cannot  distin- 
guish correctly  the  color  of  any  red  object.  If  the  object  is  very 
bright  red,  it  looks  like  feeble  green,  and  if  feeble  red,  it  appears 
black.  The  explanation  of  this,  according  to  the  above  theory  is 
that  the  waves  of  light  from  a  red  object  on  entering  a  red-blind 
eye  do  not  produce  the  sensation  of  red,  because  the  red  perceiv- 
ing nerve  elements  are  absent,  but  they  fall  on  the  green  and  vio- 
let perceiving  elements.  The  waves  of  light  from  green  objects 
are  nearest  the  length  of  those  of  red  objects,  and  the  waves  from 
bright  red  objects  excite  the  green  perceiving  nerve  elements 
slightly,  producing  the  sensation  of  feeble  green,  while  feeble  red 
is  not  sufficiently  strong  to  excite  them,  and  the  sensation  is 
black  or  perhaps  a  brown. 


132  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Yellow,  which  is  a  combination  of  red  and  green,  appears  green 
to  the  red  blind,  as  the  red  part  of  it  produces  no  impression 
except  on  the  green-perceiving  nerve  elements. 

Red  and  green  objects  may  appear  to  him  of  the  same  color, 
only  differing  in  intensity.  An  intense  red  and  feeble  green  may 
appear  to  him  to  be  of  the  same  color.  "A  color-blind  officer 
once  desired  to  purchase  a  blue  uniform ;  he  chose  a  blue  coat 
and  waistcoat  and  red  breeches,  which  he  supposed  matched." 

Another  case  is  that  of  a  person  who  said  he  could  not  see 
any  difference  between  the  red  ripe  fruit  on  the  trees  and  the 
leaves ;  a  boiled  lobster  and  a  cucumber  were  to  him  of  the  same 
color. 

Another  wrote  a  letter,  part  with  black  ink  and  part  with  red, 
without  being  aware  of  any  difference.  Another  says  a  red-brick 
house  and  the  green  lawn  on  which  it  is  situated  are  of  the  same 
color. 

A  color-blind  engraver  says  his  defect  is  an  advantage  to  him, 
as  he  sees  colored  objects  in  black  and  white,  just  as  he  desires  to 
engrave  them.  A  color  blind  person  picked  up  a  red-hot  coal  and 
asked  what  that  funny  green  thing  was.  Another,  an  artist, 
painted  a  landscape  with  red  trees.  Another  purchased  a  pair  of 
green  pants  supposing  they  were  brown.  An  architect  copied  a 
brown  house  in  blue  and  green  and  made  the  sky  above  it  rose 
color.  A  post-office  clerk,  who  sold  the  stamps,  found  himself  in 
trouble  because  he  did  not  distinguish  the  red  from  the  green 
stamps  by  their  color.* 

Color  blindness  is,  however,  normal  at  the  periphery  of  the 
retina.  This  leads  us  to  make  mention  of  the  fact  that  impor- 
tant changes  in  the  quality  of  our  sensations  are  dependent  upon 
the  portion  of  the  retina  on  which  the  visual  image  falls.  The 
entire  retina  can  be  divided  into  three  belts  or  zones— a  central 
one  (the  belt  immediately  surrounding  the  yellow  spot),  a  middle 
zone  and  an  outer  or  peripheral  one.  In  the  zone  immediately 
surrounding  the  fovea,  nearly  all  colors  can  be  recognized.  Out- 

*Many  other  such  examples  are  found  in  Superintendent  Peckham's  interesting 
article  on  Color  Blindness— Wisconsin  Board  of  Health  report  for  1881. 


SENSATION.  133 

side  of  this  is  the  second  zone,  in  which  blue  and  yellow  can  alone 
be  distinguished.  Farther  out  at  the  periphery,  color  shades  can- 
not be  distinguished  at  all,  the  various  colors  all  appearing 
black,  white  or  gray.  In  passing  from  the  center  to  the  periphery 
red  changes  at  first  into  orange,  then  into  violet  and  blue  in  turn, 
and  finally,  into  grey  as  it  passes  out  from  the  field  of  vision. 

Have  you  ever  tried  this  interesting  experiment?  Require 
the  subject  to  fix  his  attention  on  some  designated  point  di- 
rectly in  front  of  him.  While  his  eyes  are  thus  fixed  on  this 
point,  approach  him  from  behind  with  a  pencil  or  small  stick,  or, 
better,  a  black  piece  of  pasteboard,  at  the  end  of  which  is  a  small 
bit  of  colored  paper— e.  g.,  yellow.  Observe  how  far  forward  it 
must  be  moved  before  he  will  discern  its  color.  You  will  notice 
that  some  colors  must  be  moved  much  farther  forward  than 
others  in  order  that  they  may  be  recognized.  Furthermore,  you 
will  observe  that  the  object  is  seen,  no  matter  what  be  its  color, 
long  before  the  color  is  itself  recognized. 

It  is  a  disputed  question  as  to  how  many  colors  are  distin- 
guishable. You  remember  Newton  speaks  of  the  "  seven  primary 
colors."  Some  of  the  colors  he  names,  however,  are  not  any 
more  primary  or  fundamental  than  many  he  omits.  At  any  rate, 
it  is  certain  that  his  classification  is  very  unsatisfactory.  Why 
indigo  should  be  given  a  place  in  his  list  while  brown  is  shut  out, 
is  difficult  to  conceive.  We  know  that  the  number  of  color  tones 
discernible  by  the  human  eye  is  very  large.  In  oil  the  average 
person  can  perceive  125  colors.  Herschel  makes  the  claim  that 
the  worker  on  the  mosaics  at  Rome  must  have  distinguished  at 
least  30,000  color  tones. 

It  has  been  claimed  that  certain  of  the  early  nations  — that  is, 
the  human  race  at  a  certain  primitive  stage  of  culture,  had  no 
color  sensations— they  were  color  blind.  In  one  of  his  earlier 
writings,  Gladstone  makes  the  claim  that  the  ancient  Greeks  were 
color  blind  to  blue,  and  bases  this  claim  on  the  fact  that  Homer 
had  no  proper  terms  for  blue.  Also  in  describing  the  rainbow  no 
mention  was  made  of  blue.  The  Bongo  negroes  of  Central  Amer- 
ica designate  but  two  colors — red  and  black.  It  is  interesting 


134  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

to  note  in  this  connection  that  some  insects  have  distinct  color 
sensations. 

If  certain  colors,  for  example  green  and  red,  are  in  some  way 
united  on  the  retina,  we  have  a  distinct  sensation  of  a  new  color 
tone  very  unlike  either  of  the  two  thus  united.  If  red  and  green 
are~  so  united  we  have  the  color  called  "  white."  Two  colors 
which  by  their  admixture  produce  white  are  called  complemen- 
tary colors.  For  every  color  there  is  another  which,  if  mixed  with 
it,  will  produce  a  colorless  combination.  The  complementary 
colors  for  different  persons  are  not  always  the  same,  and  the 
two  eyes  of  the  same  person  may  differ  in  this  respect.  The  sub- 
joined table  of  Helmholtz,  has  some  general  significance  as  bear- 
ing on  this  subject  of  complementary  colors : 

Complementary 
Color.  Color. 

Red Green-blue 

Orange Blue 

Yellow Indigo-blue 

Green-yellow Violet 

The  effect  of  one  color  on  another  when  two  patches  of  color 
are  adjacent  or  are  presented  to  the  eye,  one  directly  after  the 
other,  is  called  contrast.  You  all  know  that  a  bright  object  ap- 
pears brighter  with  surroundings  darker  than  itself  and  darker 
with  surroundings  brighter  than  itself. 

We  have  both  successive  and  simultaneous  contrast.  Select  a 
piece  of  medium  gray  paper  from  which  cut  four  small  squares 
(each  about  one-half  inch  square).  Then  choose  four  differently 
colored  sheets  of  paper— e.  g.,  bright  red,  yellow,  blue  and  green, 
each  piece  about  six  inches  square.  Lay  one  of  your  small  squares 
of  gray  on  each  of  these  colored  pieces  and  cover  them  all  with  a 
piece  of  white  tissue  paper.  Your  gray  squares  that  are  actually 
of  the  same  shade  now  appear  to  be  of  different  colors.  In  each 
case  they  assume  a  shade  or  color  tone  complementary  to  that 
of  the  large  color  surf  ace  on  which  they  lie.  Thus  the  gray  square 
that  happens  to  lie  on  the  blue  ground  will  appear  yellow,  the 
one  on  the  green  surface  will  appear  a  deep  pink,  the  one  on  the 
yellow  will  appear  blue,  while  that  on  the  red  will  appear  green. 


SENSATION.  135 

The  retinal  image  in  the  human  eye  is,  as  you  know,  always  in- 
verted ;  the  points  that  are  at  the  right  and  upper  portion  of 
the  object  are  at  the  left  and  lower  portion  of  the  image,  and  vice 
versa.  Still  we  do  not  see  the  object  inverted,  corresponding  to. 
the  image  on  the  retina,  but  we  see  it  -''right  side  up"  corre- 
sponding to  the  object  itself.  That  the  image  on  the  retina  is 
inverted  is  specifically  characteristic  of  the  eyes  of  vertebrates. 
The  composite  image  in  the  compound  eye  of  the  glowworm  or 
fly  is  not  an  inverted  but  an  upright  retinal  image. 

Again,  how  is  it,  having  two  eyes  and  therefore  two  retinal 
images,  that  we  do  not  see  objects  as  double,  as  we  do  when  we 
push  the  side  of  the  eyeball  with  our  finger  when  gazing  fixedly 
at  an  object?  The  customary  union  of  the  two  retinal  images 
is  in  the  main  accounted  for  by  the  crossing  of  the  optic  nerve 
fibers,  for  by  this  means  the  excitations  produced  in  the  left  half 
of  each  retina  are  joined  and  together  conducted  to  the  right 
hemisphere  of  the  brain,  and  vice  versa. 

With  a  single  motionless  eye  we  could  have  no  possible  percep- 
tion of  solid  objects.  The  retinal  images  are  superficial  and  plani- 
form,  but  the  mind  sees  things  as  solids.  The  mind,  then,  asso- 
ciates the  ideas  gained  through  movement  and  touch  with  thoseof 
simple  vision.  A  person  that  is  blind  from  birth  and  receives  his 
eyesight  later  in  life  as  the  gift  of  supreme  surgical  skill,  conceives 
all  objects  to  be  directly  in  contact  — in  actual  touch  with  the 
outer  surface  of  the  eyeball.  He  only  learns  by  degrees  to  pro- 
ject his  sensations  of  sight  accurately  with  reference  to  both  dis- 
tance and  solidity. 

By  vision  alone  a  sphere  is  perceived  simply  as  a  delicately 
shaded  disk.  A  cube  is  a  flat  surface  bounded  by  converging 
lines  and  abruptly  shaded.  Ruskin  says:  "The  whole  technical 
power  of  painting  depends  on  our  recovery  of  what  maybe  called 
the  innocence  of  the  eye;  that  is  to  say,  of  a  sort  of  childish  per- 
ception of  these  flat  stains  of  color  merely  as  such,  without  a  con- 
sciousness of  what  they  signify  as  a  blind  man  would  see  them  if 
suddenly  gifted  with  sight." 

In  normal  circumstances  sight  is  the  leading  avenue  of  percep- 


136  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tion  or  observation.  The  superiority  of  vision  to  the  other  senses 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  by  means  of  this  avenue  of  sense  we  can 
apprehend  things  at  a  distance  as  well  as  those  that  are  near,  as 
well  as  a  great' many  things  at  the  same  time— for  example,  the 
variously  colored  leaves  of  an  autumn  tree,  or  the  pattern  of  a 
wall  paper  or  carpet.  And  again  the  eye  calls  forth  our  admira- 
tion on  account  of  the  extreme  delicacy  with  which  it  acts.  It  can 
pass  from  one  object  to  another  with  a  swiftness  which  none  of 
the  other  end  organs  of  sense  can  imitate.  It  thus  gathers  a  large 
amount  of  data  in  a  very  short  time.  It  places  these  data  at  the 
service  of  the  intellect  as  quick  as  the  intellect  can  use  them.  The 
eye  has  always  been  regarded  as  the  noblest  of  the  sense-organs. 
As  all  know,  we  are  exceedingly  dependent  upon  the  acquired 
perceptions  of  sight.  Of  these  acquired  perceptions  there  are  sev- 
eral classes.  In  the  first  place  we  judge  of  distance  by  size.  Again, 
if  we  know  the  real  size  of  an  object  we  estimate  its  distance  by 
its  apparent  magnitude.  If  we  actually  know  the  flying  bird  to 
be  an  eagle,  and  yet  find  that  it  appears  exceedingly  small  we  are 
sure  that  it  is  a  great  distance  from  us.  If  we  are  on  the  roof  of 
a  building  and  know  that  the  persons  walking  on  the  streets  be- 
low are  full-grown  men,  which,  however,  look  to  us  from  our  ele- 
vation like  pygmies,  we  judge,  and  judge  rightly,  that  we  are  quite 
a  considerable  distance  from  the  ground.  Likewise  we  judge  of 
magnitude  by  the  assumed  distance.  If  we  have  a  correct  idea  of 
the  distance  we  perceive  them  full  size.  If,  however,  we  are  de- 
ceived as  to  the  distance  we  always  make  serious  errors  with  ref- 
erence to  the  actual  size  of  the  object.  A  fly  skipping  across  the 
window-pane  may  for  a  moment  be  regarded  as  a  large  bird  at  a 
great  distance.  If,  however,  the  magnitude  be  unknown  we  judge 
of  distance  by  means  of  the  clearness  of  the  color,  the  sharpness 
of  the  outline,  and  the  intensity  of  the  impression  which  the  ob- 
ject makes  upon  us.  The  traveler  from  the  Atlantic  Coast  States 
or  the  smoky  Eastern  city,  who  travels  across  The  Plains  judges 
the  mountains  of  Colorado  to  be  far  nearer  than  they  actually  are. 
We  hear  of  many  laughable  experiences  of  tourists  who  have  at- 
tempted to  walk  to  a  given  mountain  before  breakfast,  thinking 


SENSATION.  137 

it  to  be  but  a  short  distance,  but  discovering  that  it  is  actually 
several  miles  away.  Such  an  illusion  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
atmosphere  is  much  more  transparent  than  that  to  which  the 
traveler  is  accustomed.  Furthermore,  intermediate  objects  affect 
our  judgments  of  distance  and  therefore  our  judgments  of  size. 
This  accounts  for  the  fact  that  the  sun  and  moon  appear  larger 
at  the  horizon  than  at  the  zenith.  The  intensity  of  the  impres- 
sion also  plays  an  important  part  in  these  judgments  of  distance. 
If  a  light  makes  but  a  faint  impression  on  us  we  judge  it  to  be  at 
a  considerable  distance.  When  the  locomotive  engineer,  as  he 
speeds  his  train  through  the  darkness,  perceives  the  lights  of  the 
distant  station  which  are  therefore  at  about  the  same  distance 
from  him,  he  knows  which  are  the  red  and  which  are  the  white 
lights,  though  they  evoke  no  color  sensations.  This  is  because 
the  red  light  always  gives  rise  to  a  more  intense  sensation  than 
a  white  light  at  the  same  distance. 

The  blind  man  can  have  no  notion  of  what  we  mean  when  we 
speak  of  objects  appearing  smaller  as  they  move  away,  because 
he  is  compelled  to  always  think  of  them  as  of  their  constant  tac- 
tile size  just  as  he  recognizes  them  by  their  u  tactile  names  "  after 
he  has  been  made  to  see. 


LESSON  XII. 
SENSATION  (CONTINUED). 

HEARING. 

THE  human  ear  consists  of  three  portions— the  external  ear  or 
concha;  the  middle  ear  or  tympanum  ;  and  the  internal  ear  or 
labyrinth.  (For  a  description  of  the  structure  of  the  ear  the 
reader  is  referred  to  any  good  book  on  anatomy.  Space  will  not 
permit  a  detailed  description  here.)* 

The  internal  ear  is  really  the  organ  of  hearing  and  consists  of  a 
complicated  and  tortuous  bony  tube  or  chamber  resembling  some- 
what the  interior  of  a  snail  shell.  The  function  of  the  external  ear 
(the  expansion  seen  on  the  exterior  of  the  head,  called  the  concha) 
is  to  receive,  convey  and  modify  the  vibratory  action  of  the  air 
until  the  tympanum  is  reached.  The  tympanum,  or  "drum  of 
the  ear,"  consists  of  a  parchment-like  substance  which  is  con- 
nected with  a  chain  of  bones  that  play  upon  a  membranous 
chamber  inclosing  a  liquid  substance. 

Bodies  vary  in  the  ability  to  emit  or  convey  sound.  This  is 
the  same  as  saying  that  their  susceptibility  to  vibration  is  differ- 
ent. A  stick  of  timber  or  bar  of  iron  will  convey  to  the  ear  in 
contact  with  it  the  sound  made  by  a  scratch  of  a  pin,  for  hun- 
dreds of  feet.  Likewise  the  rudely  constructed  toy  telephone  of 
childhood  days  will  convey  a  whisper  for  a  long  distance,  though 
it  consists  of  nothing  but  two  pasteboard  collar  boxes  connected 
by  a  piece  of  twine  from  1,500  to  3,000  feet  in  length. 

Waves  that  are  non-periodic  produce  what  is  called  a  "  noise;" 
when  these  same  auditory  waves  are  periodic  they  constitute  a 
"  tone  "  or  "  note."  What  are  ordinarily  called  noises  are  really 
accompanied  by  musical  notes.  The  slamming  door  is  accompa- 

*The  best  published  work  thus  far  is  that  on  "  The  Vertebrate  Ear,"  by  Dr. 
Howard  Ayers.    Published  in  Journal  of  Morphology,  May,  1892. 
(138) 


SENSATION.  139 

nied  by  some  music.  Likewise  all  tones  are  accompanied  by 
noises.  For  example,  the  scraping  of  the  violin.  Noises  may  be 
compounded  out  of  musical  notes.  Thus,  when  you  strike  a  sin- 
gle key  on  the  piano  you  have  a  musical  tone.  Strike  all  the 
keys  at  the  same  time  and  you  have,  instead  of  several  musical 
notes,  a  most  outrageous  non-musical  noise. 

The  various  efforts  made  by  scientists  to  determine  the  lower 
limit  of  sound  for  the  human  ear,  have  resulted  in  disagreement. 
The  difficulty,  of  course,  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  absolute  stillness 
essential  to  the  perfect  working  of  the  experiment  can  never  be 
secured.  The  best  record  of  which  we  know  up  to  date  gives  the 
result  of  researches  made  by  Schafhautl  who  fixed  the  lower  limit 
of  sound  as  that  made  by  a  cork  ball  weighing  one  milligram 
(.0154  grains),  falling  from  a  height  of  one  millimeter  (.03937 
inch).  The  acuteness  of  hearing  is  frequently  increased  by  dis- 
ease. "  Exalted  hearing,"  by  which  is  meant  an  unduly  keen  per- 
ception of  sounds,  is  common  to  many  disturbances  of  the  nervous 
system,  both  functional  and  organic.  As  a  rule,  the  intoxi- 
cated person  has  the  experience  of  "  exalted  hearing,"  L  e.,  his 
sense  of  hearing  is  more  acute  than  when  he  is  in  a  nor- 
mal or  "sober"  condition.  The  test  usually  employed  by 
railroad  corporations  to  discover  the  acuteness  of  the  sense  of 
hearing  in  their  employes  serves  very  well  as  a  laboratory  test, 
though  crude  it  may  seem,  for  the  purpose  of  determining  the  mini- 
mal sounds  that  can  be  heard.  The  experiment  should  take  place 
in  a  large  carpeted  room,  as  free  as  possible  from  noise.  Let  the 
subject  be  seated  with  his  side  toward  the  experimenter.  He 
should  be  blindfolded  and  have  the  ear  opposite  to  the  one  being 
tested  plugged  with  cotton.  The  experimenter  then  endeavors 
to  find  what  is  the  greatest  distance  at  which  the  subject  can 
hear  the  tick  of  a  watch  which  is  held  at  the  level  of  the  ear.  The 
distance  at  which  the  sound  of  the  watch-tick  can  be  heard  may 
be  found  to  vary  from  three  to  seven  yards. 

Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the  fact  that  by  bringing 
the  finger  in  contact  with  a  cogwheel  revolving  at  agivenrate,  or 
a  tuning  fork,  we  may  have  as  many  as  1,000  sensations  in  a  single 


140  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

second.  (See page  116.)  But  if  the  rate  be  increased  beyond  1 ,000 
per  second  there  results  one  continuous  sensation.  The  sense 
of  hearing  comes  closest  to  the  sense  of  touch.  In  experiments 
with  one  ear  the  crack  of  two  electric  sparks  may  be  heard  as 
distinct  when  the  one  sounds  .002  of  a  second  before  the  other; 
or,  to  be  more  accurate,  .00205  of  a  second.  When  the  sounds 
come  as  close  together  as  .00198  of  a  second  they  are  heard  as 
one  sound,  a  little  louder  than  a  single  spark  would  make.  In 
experiments  with  both  ears  the  limit  is  higher— .064  of  a  second. 

To  recapitulate  briefly,  we  would  say  that  the  specific  physical 
stimulus  for  the  organ  of  hearing  consists  of  simple  sound  waves 
that  unite  sometimes  as  musical  sound  waves  and  sometimes  as 
sound  waves  of  noise.  These  sound  waves  act  as  stimuli  upon 
the  peripheral  termination  of  the  auditory  nerve. 

Sensations  of  musical  sound  can  also  be  produced  by  electrical 
stimulation  of  the  auditory  nerve.  Mechanical  stimuli,  such  as 
the  pressure  of  tumors  on  the  auditory  nerve,  also  produce  sen- 
sations of  hearing. 

In  our  psychological  investigations  of  the  sensations  of  sound 
we  must  first  consider  their  various  qualities.  We  must,  how- 
ever, exclude  the  large  class  of  sensations  known  as  noises,  since 
they  compose  an  especial  group  of  sensations  hardly  accessible 
to  investigation.  For  our  present  purpose  it  is  sufficient  to  de- 
vote our  attention  to  the  simple  sensations  of  tones  and  of  music- 
al sounds.  Your  knowledge  of  physics  tells  you  that  the  so-called 
tones  of  the  piano  are  not  simple  but  complex.  Simple  sounds  are 
most  easily  produced  by  striking  a  tuning  fork.  We  get  compar- 
atively simple  tones  by  blowing  across  the  neck  of  an  open  bottle 
or  from  a  flute.  The  only  difference  in  the  quality  of  all  really 
simple  tones  lies  in  their  pitch,  to  which  the  number  of  vibrations 
per  second  on  the  part  of  the  stimulating  medium  corresponds. 
The  greater  the  number  of  vibrations  the  higher  do  we  perceive 
the  tone  to  be.  The  lowest  audible  note  varies,  of  course,  with 
different  individuals.  For  the  average  person  the  lower  limit  of 
pitch  is  about  40  vibrations  per  second.  Helmholtz  puts  the 
limit  at  28  vibrations,  Preyer  at  16,  others  at  19  and  23,  while 


SENSATION.  141 

Wundt  claims  to  have  heard  even  eight  vibrations  per  second. 
The  highest  audible  note  is  made  up  of  about  40,000  vibrations 
per  second.  Some  persons  cannot  hear  the  cry  of  a  bat  or  the 
chirp  of  a  cricket,  which  comprise  about  37,500  vibrations  a 
second. 

The  sensitiveness  of  the  ear  to  differences  of  pitch  varies  greatly 
with  different  individuals  and  with  the  same  individual  for  the 
different  octaves  of  the  musical  scale.  Persons  are  frequently  met 
with,  who  are  totally  insensitive  to  differences  in  pitch— they  do 
not  know  one  note  from  another.  How  terrible  it  must  be  to 
have  this  world  full  of  beautiful  rhythmic  sounds  reduced  to  a 
continuous  monotone. 

By  an  elaborate  series  of  experiments,  it  has  been  found  that 
if  we  sound  a  tone  of  120  vibrations  and  then  one  of  120^  vibra- 
tions per  second,  the  average  person  can  clearly  distinguish  the 
pitch  of  both  tones.  If  we  produce  a  tone  of  960  vibrations  per 
second,  it  is  found  that  a  tone  of  960^-  vibrations  can  be  distin- 
guished from  it.  But  if  it  required  i  of  a  vibration  when  the  rate 
is  120  per  second,  it  ought  require  8  times  i,  or  more  than  one 
vibration,  when  the  number  is  960  per  second.  Therefore,  the 
relative  discriminative  ability  is  not  constant. 

We  now  come  to  define  timbre.  By  the  timbre  of  a  note  we 
mean  its  "  color  tone."  To  illustrate.  The  C  of  the  piano  sounds 
quite  different  from  the  pure  C  produced  by  the  flute  or  tuning 
fork,  despite  the  absolute  sameness  of  pitch.  The  C  of  the  violin 
or  human  voice  would  differ  still  from  that  of  either  the  piano  or 
flute.  Compare  the  C  of  different  makes  of  pianos,  the  same  ab- 
solute number  of  vibrations  are  evoked  in  each  case,  but  there  is  a 
difference  between  the  C  of  the  Stein  way,  Knabe,  Chickering  or 
Sohmer  pianos,  respectively.  All  these  differences  of  quality  in 
the  auditory  sensations  when  the  pitch  remains  the  same,  are 
comprehended  in  the  conception  of  "  timbre"  or  color  tone. 

Bearing  upon  the  discriminative  ability  of  the  ear  for  the 
intensity  of  sounds  we  have  the  interesting  series  of  experiments 
by  Dr.  Merkel  and  Professor  Frank  Angell.  Merkel  permitted 
the  person  on  whom  he  was  experimenting  to  hear  two  stimuli 


142  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  sound  that  are  alike  in  quality  but  different  in  intensity,  and 
then  requested  him  to  determine  an  acoustic  stimulus  that  would 
give  rise  to  a  sensation  that  could  be  classified  as  lying  directly 
between  the  first  two.  Experimenting  in  this  way  Merkel  and 
others  have  found  that  the  just  perceivable  increment  of  loudness 
required  an  increase  of  three-tenths  of  the  original  stimulus  be- 
tween 20  and  5,000  of  his  arbitrary  scale. 

The  discriminative  ability  of  the  ear  both  for  differences  in 
pitch  and  for  differences  in  intensity  is  largely  influenced  by  rep- 
etition and  by  amount  of  time  that  elapses  between  the  two 
stimuli  producing  the  sensations  that  are  to  be  compared.  Two 
tones  so  closely  related  as  to  be  just  distinguishable  when  heard 
in  immediate  succession  appear  to  consciousness  as  one  and  the 
same  when  the  interval  is  over  one-half  of  a  minute. 

We  are  quite  likely  to  be  mistaken  with  reference  to  our  judg- 
ments of  the  direction  from  which  sound  comes  and  the  location 
of  its  source.  When  the  head  is  held  at  rest  and  a  sound  stimu- 
lus occurs,  we  frequently  make  mistakes  by  saying  the  sound 
came  from  before  when  it  really  came  from  behind ;  that  it  came 
from  above  when  it  really  came  from  below.  Sound  coming  from 
the  right  and  left  is  also  exceedingly  difficult  to  distinguish  when 
the  head  is  kept  motionless.  Of  course  we  are  guided  by  experi- 
ence. Weaker  sensations  of  sound  are  localized  at  a  point  re- 
mote from  us,  while  the  stronger  sensations  are  regarded  as 
coming  from  a  point  quite  near.  Seat  a  person  and  blindfold 
him.  Snap  a  telegraph  sounder  at  different  localities  about  two 
feet  from  his  head  and  require  him  to  designate  the  point  from 
which  the  sound  came.  You  will  find  that  the  above  statements 
with  reference  to  errors  in  judging  the  distinction  of  sound,  are 
more  than  verified  by  such  an  experiment. 

Continuous  sounds  are  more  difficult  to  localize  than  short, 
sharp,  rapid  sounds.  In  a  room  heated  by  steam,  blindfold  a  per- 
son standing  near  the  center,  turn  him  round  and  round  until  he 
loses  all  notion  of  the  points  of  the  compass.  Open  the  stopcock 
of  the  steam  radiator  and  he  will  misjudge  its  location  nearly 
every  time.  The  slight  sound  made  by  the  breathing  of  a  sleeping 


SENSATION.  143 

child  in  the  next  room  maybe  interpreted  to  be  the  wail  of  a  hound 
in  the  distant  woods.  The  writer  remembers  when  a  boy  of  being 
terribly  frightened  by  "  ghosts."  A  noise  was  heard  presumably 
directly  overhead  in  a  vacant  attic.  The  ghost  stories  and 
pale  face  of  the  servant  influenced  the  childish  judgment.  On  the 
morrow  it  was  discovered  that  the  aforesaid  ghost  was  nothing 
more  than  the  noise  made  by  the  scraping  of  a  limb  of  an  apple- 
tree  against  the  side  of  the  house  as  the  wind  blew.  The  sound 
really  came  from  a  point  at  least  forty  feet  removed  from  the 
supposed  origin,  and  from  a  point  almost  directly  opposite. 
Did  you  ever  wait  for  a  train  at  the  noisy  depot,  with  the 
engines  passing  back  and  forth  ?  Have  you  not  at  such  times 
at  the  sound  of  an  approaching  engine  hurriedly  snatched  your 
traveling  bag  with  a  view  to  getting  a  good  seat,  rushed  to 
the  platform  and  found,  instead  of  your  train,  one  going  in  the 
opposite  direction  ?  If  you  ever  have  an  opportunity,  stand  for  a 
minute  on  State  street  in  Chicago  and  seek  to  judge  from  which 
direction  comes  the  sound  of  the  gong  of  the  cable  car.  Just  a 
moment  ago  while  writing  the  above  I  was  thoroughly  deceived 
by  the  slight  hissing,  whistling  sound  of  a  disorganized  gas  jet 
turned  up  to  its  full  lighting  power.  This  little  annoying  sound 
until  just  this  instant  I  thought  to  be  the  whistle  of  a  locomotive 
three-quarters  of  a  mile  away,  instead  of  comingfrom  any  part  of 
my  "  den." 

Seasickness  begins  with  the  ear.  In  the  internal  ear  or  laby- 
rinth are  three  little  tubes  which  are  placed  at  right  angles  to  each 
other,  just  like  the  three  sides  at  the  corner  of  a  book  or  cubical 
box.  They  are  bent  circular  and  filled  with  a  fluid.  They  are 
more  frequently  known  as  the  semicircular  canals.  You  can  see 
if  one's  head  is  moved  at  all  the  fluid  in  some  one  of  these  three 
tubes  is  set  in  motion.  Jutting  out  from  the  inner  surface  of 
each  of  these  canals  are  hairs  or  ciliary  processes  which  connect 
with  nerve  cells  that  are  in  touch  with  the  auditory  nerves,  and 
by  this  means  connected  with  the  auditory  center  on  the  brain- 
surface  itself.  As  the  peculiar  nerve  current  caused  by  the  motion 
of  the  head  is  transmitted  to  the  brain  it,  at  one  point  on  its  jour- 


144  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ney,runs  near  the  "  center  "  where  the  nerve  controlling  the  st©nv 
ach  has  its  origin.  When  the  moving  and  jerking  of  the  head  is 
too  prolonged  or  too  violent  the  stimulus  is  so  great  that  the 
center  for  the  nerves  of  the  stomach  is  excited,  causing  the  poor 
voyager  to  give  up  his  dinner,  or,  to  speak  in  more  approved 
vernacular,  he  is  impelled  to  "  cast  his  bread  upon  the  waters." 
Deaf  mutes,  the  semicircular  canals  of  whose  ears  are  affected, 
are  never  seasick  just  as  they  are  never  dizzy,  and  for  the  same 
reason. 

Hearing  possesses  the  highest  significance  in  the  development 
of  every  human  mind.  Without  the  sense  of  hearing  vocal  utter- 
ances would  never  become  language. 

Sounds  are  also  significant  as  expressing  the  emotional  life  of 
man.  Even  simple  and  articulate  tones  can  express  the  deepest 
feeling,  though  no  words  are  coupled  with  them.  The  sigh  of 
distress,  the  peal  of  laughter,  the  whine  of  a  beggar  are  as  clearly 
understood  and  sometimes  more  clearly  understood  without  any 
accompaniment  of  words.  Mendelssohn's"  Songs  without  Words" 
cannot  fail  to  touch  every  person  who  hears  them.  Humanity  is 
unanimous  in  naming  one  of  these  musical  gems  "  Consolation." 
The  sense  of  hearing  enables  a  man  to  communicate  with  his  fel- 
low man.  The  brotherhood  of  man  is  directly  dependent  upon 
the  sense  of  hearing.  The  voice  is  the  interpreter  of  nearly  all 
the  emotions.  As  an  intelligent  blind  man  remarked  with  great 
emphasis,  "  The  human  voice  is  to  me  the  divinest  endowment  of 
man."  Certain  it  is  that  the  dignity  of  hearing  is  above  that  of 
any  of  the  other  senses. 

A  comparatively  frequent  phenomena  is  that  known  as  color 
audition  or  pseudo-chromesthesia.  By  these  and  similar  terms 
it  is  meant  to  signify  that  large  class  of  phenomena  in  which 
colors  are  called  up  in  the  mind  of  the  person  when  certain  letters 
or  words  are  spoken  or  seen  in  print  or  writing.  These  experiences 
indicate  a  peculiar  "  faculty  "  by  means  of  which  any  primary  sen- 
sation can  evoke,  in  the  case  of  some  persons,  a  false  visual  sensa- 
tion of  color  constant  in  the  case  of  the  same  stimulus  with  the 
same  person. 


SENSATION.  145 

A  considerable  number  of  cases  have  been  investigated  by  the 
writer,  but  only  one  is  selected  on  account  of  limited  space.  It  is 
that  of  a  young  lady,  much  above  the  average  in  intelligence  and 
very  accomplished.  She  is  a  skillful  musician,  having  taught  in 
a  conservatory  of  music  for  some  years;  very  well  informed  as  to 
literature,  and  is  herself  a  pleasing  writer.  With  her  these  pseudo- 
color impressions  are  produced  in  three  ways:  First,  and  chiefly, 
when  she  sees  the  graphic  forms  of  words  and  letters;  second 
when  she  hears  letters,  words  and  other  sounds;  and,  third,  by 
means  of  association  of  ideas.  With  this  person  all  the  letters 
are  colored  and  as  follows : 

A  =  opaque  white.  N  =  gray. 

B  =dark  cactus  green.  0  =  black  on  white  ground. 

C  =pale  yellow.  P  =  bright  yellow. 

D  =tan  color.  Q  =Naples  yellow  (buff). 

E  =  warm  gray  but  pale.  R= dark  green. 

F  i=  very  dark  brown.  S  =  light  green. 

G  =  yellowish  bright  tan.  T=red ;  less  intense  than  H  or  K. 

H = red,  crimson.  U = gray. 

1  =  black  V= pearl— slightly  lavender. 
J  =  black,  sometimes  shades  into    W—  black. 

green.  X  =  red ;  still  less  intense. 

K = red— very  like  H.  Y = yellow  into  green . 

L=black.  Z— brown  sometimes  shading  into 

M  =  blue.  an  iridescent  purple. 

The  numerical  digits  are  also  colored.    Thus  1  is  black  like  i; 

2  is  opaque  white,  like  a;  3  is  bright  green,  slightly  yellow;  4  is 
seal  brown;   5,  black;    6,  gray;   7,  yellow;  8,  pink;  9,  brown, 
lighter  than  4.    The  colors  of  numbers  are  often  and  even  gener- 
ally more  intense  than  those  of  letters. 

In  music  written  in  different  keys,  C,  D,  etc.,  the  music  has  a 
general  background  of  color  which  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  in- 
dex letter  indicating  the  key.  Thus,  music  written  in  the  key  of 
D  is  tan  color.  All  "sharp"  keys  are  brighter  and  "flats"  are 
less  brilliant. 

Words  pronounced  alike  but  spelled  differently  havo  different 
colors.  Words  generally  take  their  tone  of  color  from  the  initial 
L.  P.— 10 


146  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

letter.  Thus  with  the  same  letters  in  different  combinations  we 
have  different  color-impressions — e.  g.,  deer  =  tan;  reed  =  green- 
ish yellow.  With  this  person  we  find  there  is  an  intimate  relation 
between  form  and  color.  In  grouping  several  letters  of  one  color 
we  find  that  H,  K,  T,  and  X  are  red ;  B,  R,  S,  and  6  are  green; 
C,  G,  P,  Q,  Y  and  7  are  yellow;  Z,  F,  4  and  9  are  brown;  N,  U, 
V,  A  and  E  are  gray. 

Furthermore,  the  membrane  of  the  ear  is  able  to  give  us,  by 
means  of  faint  and  delicate  pressure  sensations,  a  pretty  good 
picture  of  the  outside  world  irrespective  of  oureyes.  Suppose  you 
close  your  eyes  when  quietly  seated ;  have  some  one  bring  a  large 
object  like  a  book  or  block  of  wood  near  to  your  face  in  a  per- 
fectly noiseless  manner;  you  at  once  become  aware  of  itspresence 
and  then  of  its  departure.  Most  persons,  when  blindfolded,  can 
readily  tell  by  the  "  feel "  in  the  ear  and  face  whether  the  object 
placed  near  to  the  face  is  thick  or  thin,  solid  or  open,  etc.  Thus 
any  one  can  distinguish  between  a  solid  board,  a  perforated 
board,  a  piece  of  wire  gauze  and  an  empty  frame,  respectively. 

Mr.  Dresslar  has  made  some  interesting  investigations  into 
this  subject.*  As  apparatus  he  used  a  light  framework  of  wood 
four  feet  long  and  one  foot  wide,  and  divided  into  four  spaces, 
each  one  foot  square.  The  first  one  of  these  spaces  was  left  open, 
the  second  latticed  with  strips  three-quarters  of  an  inch  wide,  and 
with  spaces  of  one-half  of  an  inch  between  them;  the  first  space 
was  closed  solidly  with  a  panel  of  wood,  while  the  fourth  was 
filled  with  a  wire  screen.  The  frame  was  then  suspended  from  a 
high  ceiling  by  four  strings  fastened  in  pairs  (so  that  it  would 
swing  lengthwise  easily  and  without  swerving)  and  made  to 
swing  low  enough  to  be  opposite  the  face  of  the  subject.  A  silk 
thread  was  fastened  to  the  ends  of  the  frame,  and  passed  over 
small  pulleys  inserted  in  standards  set  about  ten  feet  from  each 
end  of  the  frame.  The  two  ends  of  the  strings  were  then  tied  to- 
gether to  furnish  the  operator  an  easy  and  noiseless  method  for 
shifting  the  frame  so  as  to  bring  the  different  spaces  opposite  the 
ear  and  face  of  the  subject. 

*  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  V,  No.  3. 


SENSATION. 


147 


The  method  of  experimentation  was  as  follows :  The  subject 
with  closed  eyes  was  blindfolded  in  such  a  way  that  little  or  none 
of  the  face  but  the  eyes  was  covered ;  he  was  seated  comfortably 
with  his  face  at  a  distance  of  two  or  three  inches  from  the  path 
of  the  frame,  and  asked  to  judge  between  two  spaces  irregularly 
presented.  He  was  required  to  indicate  his  judgment  by  a  pre- 
arranged system  of  signs  in  order  to  prevent  any  reverbera- 
tion of  the  voice  which  might  vitiate  the  results.  The  first  set  of 
judgments  were  thus  taken,  and  were  for  the  purpose  of  finding 
the  degree  of  power  to  distinguish  between  the  three  following 
pairs:  Open  —  lattice;  lattice  — solid;  solid  — wire.  The  accom- 
panying table  shows  the  discriminative  ability  thus  discovered 
for  three  different  subjects : 


SUBJECT. 

OPEN  AND  LATTICE. 

LATTICE  AND  SOLID. 

SOLID  AND  WIRE. 

R.  W. 

R.  W. 

R.  W. 

R.  W. 

R.  W. 

R.  W. 

J.  A.  B.  .  . 
O  C. 

65  15 
72  47 
53  24 

59  25 
74  46 
58  17 

58   2 
33  13. 
69   1 

56   0 
28  14 
70   4 

45   0 
21   4 
73   0 

46  2 
14  9 

77  2 

F.  B.  D.  .  . 

Explanation  of  Table.— The  figures  in  the  columns  marked  R  indicate  the  num- 
ber of  correct  judgments,  those  in  columns  marked  W  incorrect.  For  example, 
when  J.  A.  B.  judged  between  the  open  and  lattice  spaces,  he  made  65  right  and  15 
wrong  judgments  in  80  presentations  of  the  open,  and  59  right  and  25  wrong  in  84 
presentations  of  the  lattice;  while  judging  between  lattice  and  solid,  he  made  58 
right  and  2  wrong  judgments  in  60  presentations  of  the  lattice,  and  56  right  and  no 
wrong  judgments  when  the  solid  was  presented,  and  so  on  for  all  the  others. 

Of  course  in  the  ordinary  routine  of  daily  life  the  normal  per- 
son makes  no  use  of  the  feeling  of  "  shut-in-ness  "  he  experiences 
when  a  more  or  less  solid  object  is  held  near  the  face.  The  blind, 
however,  are  very  dependent  upon  this  peculiar  class  of  sensa- 
tions. No  man  enjoys  traveling  more  than  the  blind  man.  He 
can  tell  whether  his  train  is  wending  its  way  through  a  hilly,  un- 
even country  or  over  the  broad  plains.  The  blind  man  is  ever 


148  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

aware  of  the  extent  of  his  horizon.  In  an  interesting  book, 
"  Blindness  and  the  Blind,"  its  author  gives  an  interesting  account 
of  how  the  blind  receive  their  perceptive  images :  "  Whether  within 
a  house  or  in' the  open  air,  whether  walking  or  standing  still,  I  can 
tell,  although  quite  blind,  when  I  am  opposite  an  object,  and  can 
perceive  whether  it  be  tall  or  short,  slender  or  bulky.  I  can  also 
detect  whether  it  be  a  solitary  object  or  a  continuous  fence ; 
whether  it  be  a  close  fence  or  composed  of  open  rails;  and  often 
whether  it  be  a  wooden  fence,  a  brick  or  stonewall,  or  a  quickset 
hedge.  I  cannot  usually  perceive  objects  if  much  lower  than  my 
shoulder,  but  sometimes  very  low  objects  can  be  detected.  This 
may  depend  on  the  nature  of  the  objects,  or  on  some  abnormal 
state  of  the  atmosphere.  The  currents  of  air  can  have  nothing  to 
do  with  this  power,  as  the  state  of  the  wind  does  not  directly  af- 
fect it;  the  sense  of  hearing  has  nothing  to  do  with  it,  as  when 
snow  lies  thickly  on  the  ground  objects  are  more  distinct,  although 
the  footfall  cannot  be  heard.  I  seem  to  perceive  objects  through 
the  skin  of  my  face,  and  to  have  the  impressions  immediately 
transmitted  to  the  brain. 

"The  only  part  of  my  body  possessing  this  power  is  my  face; 
this  I  have  ascertained  by  suitable  experiments.  Stopping  my 
ears  does  not  interfere  with  it,  but  covering  my  face  with  a  thick 
veil  destroys  it  altogether.  None  of  the  five  senses  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  existence  of  this  power,  and  the  circumstances 
above  named  induce  me  to  call  this  unrecognized  sense  by  the  name 
of  'facial  perception.'  When  passing  along  a  street  I  can  distin- 
guish shops  from  private  houses,  and  even  point  out  the  doors 
and  windows,  etc.,  and  this  whether  the  doors  be  shut  or  open. 
When  a  window  consists  entirely  of  one  entire  sheet  of  glass  it  is 
more  difficult  to  discover  than  one  composed  of  a  number  of 
small  panes.  From  this  it  would  appear  that  glass  is  a  bad  con- 
ductor of  sensation,  or  at  any  rate,  of  the  sensation  specially 
connected  with  this  sense.  When  objects  below  the  face  are 
perceived,  the  sensation  seems  to  come  in  an  oblique  line  from 
the  object  to  the  upper  part  of  the  face.  While  walking  with  a 
friend  in  Forest  Lane,  Stratford,  I  said,  pointing  to  a  fence 


SENSATION.  149 

which  separated  the  road  from  a  field,  <  Those  rails  are  not  quite 
so  high  as  my  shoulder.'  He  looked  at  them  and  said  they  were 
higher.  We,  however,  measured  and  found  them  about  three 
inches  lower  than  my  shoulder.  At  the  time  of  making  this  ob- 
servation I  was  about  four  feet  from  the  rails.  Certainly  in  this 
instance  facial  perception  was  more  accurate  than  sight.  When 
the  lower  part  of  a  fence  is  brickwork  and  the  upper  part  rails, 
the  fact  can  be  detected,  and  the  line  where  the  two  meet  easily 
perceived.  Irregularities  in  height,  and  projections  and  indenta- 
tions in  walls  can  also  be  discovered." 


LESSON  XIII. 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES. 

WE  now  propose  to  speak  of  the  early  development  of  the 
child's  intellect.  Since  all  knowledge  begins  with  sensation,  this 
statement  means  no  more  and  no  less  than  to  say  that  in  this 
chapter  our  endeavor  will  be  to  trace  the  processes  of  growth 
with  respect  to  the  sense  perceptions  of  the  infant's  earliest  life. 
The  question  we  are  really  occupied  with  is :  By  what  process  of 
unfolding,  in  what  order,  from  what  germ  beginnings,  through 
what  steps  or  stages,  does  the  child  mind  develop  and  mature  its 
powers  of  sense  perception  ? 

The  difficulty  one  meets  in  endeavoring  to  answer  such  a  ques- 
tion is  almost  insuperable,  since  it  is  impossible  by  memory  to 
bring  back  a  single  vestige  of  the  experiences  of  the  earliest  days 
of  our  infant  life.  As  far  as  memory  is  concerned,  the  first  days 
of  our  childhood  are  shrouded  over  with  a  cloud  of  impenetrable 
obscurity.  Not  a  single  one  of  the  " first"  sensations  can  be 
called  up  in  memory.  No  individual  can  ever  possess  memory 
power  so  potent  as  to  be  rewarded  with  success  in  its  endeavors 
to  call  up  to  the  mind  the  first  experience  had  with  the  eyes,  ears, 
fingers,  etc.  Ask  yourself  the  question :  What  was  the  first  object 
I  ever  saw ?  What  was  the  first  sound  I  ever  heard?  What  was 
the  first  thing  I  ever  touched?  What  was  my  first  sensation  of 
temperature,  taste,  smell,  motion  and  the  like  ?  To  even  propose 
such  questions  seems  the  height  of  folly.  A  little  snatch  of  poetry 
from  Dr.  Holland's  "  Bitter  Sweet "  does  not  come  amiss  when  we 
think  of  the  immense  difficulty  that  confronts  every  investigator 
in  the  realm  of  Child  Psychology : 

Who  can  tell  what  a  baby  thinks? 
Who  can  follow  the  gossamer  links? 
(150) 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  151 

By  which  the  maimikin  feels  his  way 
Out. from  the  shore  of  the  great  unknown, 
Blind  and  wailing  and  alone, 

Into  the  light  of  day? 

*»'•«'-•« 

What  does  he  think  of  his  mother's  eyes? 

What  does  he  think  of  his  mother's  hair? 
What  of  the  cradle-roof,  that  flies 

Forward  and  backward  through  the  air? 
***** 

What  does  he  think  when  her  quick  embrace 
Presses  his  hand  and  buries  his  face 
Deep  where  the  heart  throbs  sink  and  swell 
With  a  tenderness  she  can  never  tell, 
Though  she  murmur  the  words 
Of  all  the  birds— 

Words  she  has  learned  to  murmur  well? 

But  we  can  tell  what  our  infant  life  must  have  been  by  per- 
forming certain  experiments  and  making  certain  observations 
upon  children  from  the  very  first  hour  of  their  existence.  How  it 
must  have  seemed  to  us  as  children  we  cannot  possibly  tell. 
Upon  the  investigations  of  Child  Psychology  the  introspective 
methods  shed  no  direct  light.  Observation  and  experiment  are 
the  only  methods  by  which  we  learn  the  content  of  a  child's 
mind  at  any  stage  of  its  development.  Such  tests  must  be  so 
adaptable  that  they  can  be  applied  to  any  child.  Although  each 
child  has  the  same  sense  organs,  and  the  same  fundamental  modes 
of  sensibility,  we  find  that  striking  differences  of  sense  capacity 
are  met  with  in  different  individuals.  No  two  children  are  ex- 
actly alike  in  their  sense  development.  It  is  impossible  for  them 
to  be  so.  Each  child  that  enters  a  school  at  six  years  of  age  is 
different  from,  every  other  child  in  that  school.  His  eye,  ear, 
hand,  and  all  of  his  sense  organs  have  been  trained  differently. 
The  child  as  he  presents  himself  at  the  schoolroom  door  is  not 
a  rounded-out  normally  developed  child.  He  may  have  had  his 
eye  developed  at  the  expense  of  his  ear,  or  his  ear  developed  at 
the  expense  of  his  tactile  sense,  etc.  Now  the  function  of  the 
teacher  is  to  develop  the  mind  of  the  child  normally.  This  means 


152  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

that  the  various  avenues  of  sensation  must  be  trained  equally 
well.  By  the  training  or  cultivation  of  the  senses  is  meant  the 
even,  harmonious,  steady  exercising  of  the  child's  sense  organs 
so  that  these  organs  will  become  efficient  and  valued  instruments, 
capable  of  being  used  in  observation  and  discovery. 

We  all  know,  if  we  have  observed  children  at  all,  that  they 
develop  the  power  of  perception  by  many  experiments  and  many 
mistakes.  By  the  same  principle  that  the  colt  is  broken  into  the 
harness  or  the  dog  is  trained  to  know  his  place  and  function, 
does  nature  educate  her  dearest  child — man.  If  he  obeys  her  laws 
his  life  is  one  of  harmony,  freedom,  delightful  satisfaction  and 
joy.  If  he  runs  counter  to  the  rough  edges  of  stern  law  it  wounds 
and  pains. 

Dr.  Moebius,  professor  of  zoology  at  the  University  of  Kiel, 
relates  an  interesting  experiment  performed  by  Mr.  Antsberg  of 
Stralsund. 

"A  pike,  who  swallowed  all  small  fishes  which  were  put  into  the 
aquarium,  was  separated  from  them  by  a  pane  of  glass,  so  that, 
whenever  he  tried  to  pounce  on  them,  he  struck  his  gills  against 
the  glass,  and  sometimes,  so  violently ,  that  he  remained  lying  on 
his  back  as  if  dead.  Ho  recovered,  however,  and  repeated  his  on- 
slaughts till  they  became  rarer  and  rarer,  and  at  last,  after  three 
months,  ceased  altogether.  After  having  been  in  solitary  con- 
finement for  six  months,  the  pane  of  glass  was  removed  from  the 
aquarium  so  that  the  pike  could  again  roam  about  freely  among 
the  other  fishes.  He  at  once  swam  toward  them,  but  he  never 
touched  any  one  of  them  but  always  halted  at  a  respectful  dis- 
tance of  about  an  inch,  and  was  satisfied  to  share  with  the  rest 
the  meat  that  was  thrown  into  the  aquarium.  He  had  therefore 
been  trained  so  as  not  to  attack  the  other  fishes  which  he  knew 
as  inhabitants  of  the  same  tank.  As  soon,  however,  as  a  strange 
fish  was  thrown  into  the  aquarium,  the  pike  in  nowise  respected 
him  but  swallowed  him  at  once."  In  something  of  the  same  way 
as  the  pike  learned  his  lesson  by  striking  his  gills  against  the 
glass,  the  child  learns  that  the  fire  burns,  the  knife  cuts,  the  nee- 
dle pricks,  and  the  like. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  153 

Leaving  these  more  general  observations  we  come  to  the  direct 
and  specific  question— What  is  the  primary  condition  in  which 
the  mind  of  the  infant  exists  before  the  first  beginnings  of  con- 
scious activity  ?  We  can  best  answer  by  saying  that  it  is  very 
closely  allied  to  the  state  of  unbroken  sleep  undisturbed  by 
dreams.  Or  it  may  be  likened  to  a  "dead  faint"  in  which  little 
shirnmerings  of  sensation  are  experienced  in  such  an  indefinite 
and  vague  way  that  they  never  enter  into  clear  perception.  The 
soul  or  mind  of  the  infant  never  has  sensations  in  the  fullest 
sense  until  there  is  a  keen,  clear-cut,  positive  experience  of  pain 
or  pleasure. 

The  sensations  that  are  first  experienced  by  the  child  are  the 
muscular  and  organic  sensations  mentioned  in  a  previous  chap- 
ter. While  it  might  be  thought  that  hearing  would  be  one  of  the 
earliest  senses  to  develop,  such  is  not  the  case.  Usually  several 
days  elapse  before  the  child  can  be  said  to  actually  hear.  Pro- 
fessor Ladd  puts  the  case  clearly  when  he  says :  "All  newly  born 
children  are  deaf;  the  temporary  deafness  is  caused  by  lack  of  air 
in  the  tympanum  previous  to  respiration.  Great  individual  differ- 
ences exist  as  respects  the  age  at  which  children  give  unmistak- 
able tokens  of  having  sensations  of  sound.  It  was  not  until  the 
first  half  of  the  fourth  day  that  one  investigator  was  satisfied 
his  child  could  hear."  There  are,  however,  some  exceptions  to 
this.  The  writer,  in  making  some  experiments  on  his  own  little 
girl,  found  that  she  manifested  unmistakable  and  indubitable 
signs  of  hearing,  within  two  hours  after  birth.  Though  hearing 
is  feebly  developed  at  first  it  remains  the  longest  of  any  of  the 
senses.  In  falling  asleep,  hearing  is  probably  the  last  sense  we 
lose.  Likewise  as  death  creeps  over  us  we  hear  to  the  very  last — 
even  after  the  tactile  sense  is  completely  benumbed  by  death's 
chill  hand.  As  a  rule,  most  persons  are  more  easily  awakened 
by  appeal  to  hearing  than  if  the  stimulus  were  that  of  any  of  the 
other  senses.  In  states  of  stupefaction,  sleep,  drunkenness  and 
the  like,  hearing  seems  to  be  the  one  chief  strand  that  connects 
the  mind  with  the  outside  world. 

The  sense  of  taste  is  developed  still  later  than  hearing.    At  first 


154  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

the  little  babe  will  swallow  bitter  medicine  as  readily  as  milk. 
Nearly  four  weeks  must  elapse  before  it  can  possibly  distinguish 
the  one  from  ;bhe  other.  The  sense  of  smell  comes  even  later. 
Some  recent  investigators  claim  that  smell  is  active  from  the 
first. 

Almost  all  agree  that  after  the  general  muscular  sensations, 
together  with  the  organic  sensations,  those  of  the  skin  come  next 
in  order.  Perhaps  the  first  real  sensation  of  pain  the  infant  has 
is  when  the  air  rushes  into  its  little  lungs  for  the  first  time  and 
by  reflex  action  it  is  really  compelled  to  cry  and  thus  announces 
its  debut. 

It  is  hard  to  say  which  is  developed  first,  the  hand  or  the  eye. 
The  race  between  the  two  is  "neck  and  neck."  We  believe  the 
evidence  of  recent  investigation  is  in  favor  of  the  eye.  The 
infant  sees  an  object,  then  reaches  for  it.  Certain  it  is  that  the 
child  is  "  right-eyed  "  before  it  is  "  right-handed."  Touch  devel- 
ops more  rapidly  than  vision  and  its  early  discriminations  are 
more  delicate.  From  the  very  conditions  of  his  pre-natal  exist- 
ence we  might  correctly  infer  that  the  sense  of  contact  both 
with  reference  to  temperature  and  pressure  are  well  developed 
in  the  infant  at  birth.  It  is  by  means  of  touch  that  the  child 
learns  to  distinguish  his  "me"  from  the  "not-me."  By  touch 
he  first  learns  that  a  portion  of  the  world— his  body— is  himself 
and  that  another  portion  of  the  world  of  objects  is  "  not-body." 
By  what  steps  or  stages  in  the  progressive  unfolding  of  touch 
does  the  child  acquire  the  ability  to  distinguish  between  his 
"me"  and  the  "not-me"— between  himself  and  the  world? 

The  first  step  taken,  and  a  most  significant  and  important 
one  it  is,  is  that  by  which  the  mind  of  the  child  comes  to  know 
familiarly  that  his  own  body  is  bounded  by  a  limiting  surface.  Al- 
ready certain  muscular  and  tactile  sensations  have  been  clearly 
perceived.  The  material  objects  of  the  outside  world  which  affect 
the  child.'s  sensorium  come  in  contact  with  his  bodily  surface. 
These  sensations  of  contact  are  crudely  and  vaguely  localized  in 
his  skin.  By  coming  in  touch  with  these  outside  objects  the 
child  learns  to  know  that  his  body  has  a  limit.  Of  this  limit  he 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  155 

is  being  made  constantly  aware.    His  little  sense  world  is  for  the 
time  being  bounded  by  his  skin. 

A  second  step  takes  place  when  he  observes  that  there  is  a 
difference  between  touching  a  part  of  his  own  body  and  some 
other  object.  When  his  little  baby  finger  rests  on  the  table  or  on 
the  window-pane,  or  on  the  little  piece  of  Hamburg  edging  with 
which  his  " swaddling  clothes"  are  trimmed,  he  observes  that 
the  experience  is  different  from  that  which  he  has  when  with  his 
finger  he  picks  his  toes  or  touches  his  dimpled  knee.  In  the  lat- 
ter case  the  surface  that  is  touched  also  gives  the  sensation  of 
being  touched ;  in  the  case  of  the  other  objects  there  is  no  such 
sensation.  He  at  once  distinguishes  between  those  objects  which 
give  a  sensation  of  being  touched  and  those  which  do  not.  This  is 
the  distinguishing  mark  between  objects  that  are  "  body  "and 
those  that  are  "  not-body." 

Vision  evidently  begins  at  that  very  early  period  when  the 
child  notices  and  is  attracted  by  the  bright  and  steady  light. 
The  infant's  eye  is  fixed  on  such  an  object  and  follows  it  for  a 
few  degrees  from  side  to  side  in  space.  At  first  the  child  can 
only  move  his  eyes  laterally — i.  e.,  from  right  to  left,  or  from* 
left  to  right.  If  the  object  is  moved  up  and  down  his  eye  cannot 
follow  it  at  first,  as  the  muscles  which  control' the  vertical  motions 
of  the  eye  are  slow  in  receiving  their  training. 

Statistics  seem  to  show  that  very  few  children  manifest  a  pref- 
erence for  a  particular  color  before  they  are  fifty  days  old.  (See 
Preyer.)  My  own  experiments  have  not  been  very  extensive  so  far 
as  the  number  of  subjects  is  concerned,  but  they  have  been  very 
thorough  on  the  one  little  creature  that  has  kindly  lent  herself  for 
the  purposes  of  science — my  own  little  daughter.  When  she  was 
but  ten  days  old  I  began  to  experiment  upon  her  with  reference 
to  her  choice  of  colors.  The  experiment  was  very  simple.  Four 
diminutive  incandescent  lights  of  about  one-half  candle  power 
each  were  used.  The  globes  of  these  lamps  were  gaily  colored, 
being  a  bright  red,  electric  blue,  bright  green  and  brilliant  yel- 
low respectively.  All  four  of  these  little  lamps  were  placed 
directly  in  front  of  her,  and  then  each  one  of  them  was  re- 


156  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

moved  in  turn.  The  order  in  which  they  were  removed  from 
her  field  of  vision  was  varied  in  each  of  these  experiments.  This 
was  done  three  times  each  day,  for  over  two  weeks  with  no  pref- 
erence manifested  for  any  one  of  these  four  colors.  All  pleased 
her  child  eye  equally.  On  the  27th  day,  however,  a  distinct 
choice  of  color  was  manifested.  The  four  lights  were  placed  be- 
fore her  as  usual.  She  looked  at  them  all  intently.  After  one 
minute  elapsed  the  blue  one  was  removed— her  eye  followed  it  a 
short  distance  and  then  became  fixed  on  the  three  remaining 
ones.  The  blue  lamp  was  returned  to  its  place  and  the  red  one 
removed ;  she  followed  this  one  also  for  but  a  short  distance  and 
then  allowed  her  eyes  to  again  become  fastened  on  the  accus- 
tomed place.  The  red  lamp  was  returned  to  its  socket,  and  the 
yellow  one  removed.  Her  eye  followed  this  closely,  and  when  it 
passed  out  from  her  field  of  vision  she  made  it  very  evident  that 
she  was  displeased,  as  she  knitted  her  brows,  stiffened  her  back, 
threw  back  her  head  as  if  angry,  looked  vacantly  into  space,  and 
would  not  return  her  eyes  to  the  place  where  the  other  lights  re- 
mained burning  as  brightly  as  ever.  She  evidently  wanted  the 
yellow  light  and  the  yellow  light  only.  It  was  again  brought  within 
her  field  of  vision.  As  quick  as  her  eye  caught  the  brilliant  glare  a 
marked  change  came  over  her  face  and  she  showed  unmistakable 
signs  of  pleasure.  The  experiment  was  repeated  twenty-three 
times  in  five  days,  and  each  time  yellow  was  the  decided  preference. 
Kindergarten  teachers  agree  quite  generally  in  saying  that  the 
majority  of  children  coming  under  their  observation  prefer  yellow 
to  any  other  color.  The  untutored  savage  also  has  a  decided 
preference  for  that  color— especially  the  African  tribes.  There  are 
certainly  better  reasons  for  painting  a  child's  toys  yellow  than 
there  are  for  coloring  them  red,  at  least  so  far  as  the  pleasure  of 
the  child  is  concerned. 

Children  do  not  at  first  see  objects  as  we  do — one  object  nearer 
than  an  other.  At  first  they  have  no  perception  of  distance  and 
solidity.  This  is  directly  in  line  with  the  experiences  of  blind  per- 
sons on  first  obtaining  the  use  of  their  eyes.  All  objects  appear  to 
them  at  first  as  touching  their  eyes.  Like  the  infant  they  can- 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  157 

not,  with  their  eyes,  distinguish  between  a  flat  drawing  and  a 
solid  body. 

The  extension  which  is  seen  by  persons  who  have  recovered 
from  blindness  is  extension  of  two  dimensions.  A  solid  cube  or  a 
solid  sphere  is  taken  by  them  to  be  simply  a  plane  or  a  disc.  A 
solid  cube  and  a  flat  projection  of  the  same  are  both  taken  to  be 
flat  and  in  every  respect  alike.  The  testimony  is  unanimous  that 
objects  seem  very  near  to  the  eye.  Some  of  these  blind  patients 
who,  by  a  surgical  triumph,  have  been  made  to  see,  in  attempt- 
ing to  reach  objects  that  are  extended  to  them,  grasp  behind 
them  when  held  near  to  them,  and  when  more  remote  can  only 
touch  them  after  repeated  trials.  Some  are  afraid  to  move  lest 
they  should  in  some  way  strike  their  body  against  objects  which 
are  really  quite  remote;  after  using  their  eyes  for  some  time 
they  acquire  the  ability  to  discriminate  among  objects  as  near 
and  far.  It  is  by  the  use  of  touch  and  sight  together  that  the 
perceptions  of  distance  and  solidity  arise. 

That  the  eye  and  hand  cooperate  in  infancy  is  a  fact  borne  out 
by  all  observation  and  experiment.  Observe  the  maneuvers  of 
the  young  child  during  its  first  days,  and  you  will  be  convinced 
that  the  eye  and  the  hand  soon  learn  to  work  together.  As  the 
eye  of  the  infant  at  first  rests  fixedly  in  its  socket,  so  his  hands 
and  arms  at  first  hang  uselessly  from  his  shoulders  or  dangle 
helplessly  at  his  side.  There  are  no  purposeful  movements  exe- 
cuted by  the  hands  or  arms  just  as  there  are  no  objects  sought 
out  or  chosen  by  the  eye  upon  which  to  fix  its  "  point  of  regard." 
At  first  the  child  cannot  grasp  or  hold  an  object.  Notice  him  as 
he  tries  so  hard  to  carry  an  object  to  his  mouth— how  clumsily 
the  movements  are  made  and  how  unsuccessful  are  his  first  at- 
tempts. He  must  learn  to  use  his  hands  just  as  he  must  learn  to 
direct  the  movement  of  his  eyes.  All  these  uses  of  the  hand  as  of 
the  eye  are  learned  by  conscious  attention.  The  earliest  move- 
ments are  made  aimlessly ;  after  many  unsuccessful  experiments 
and  trials,  at  first  more  failures  than  successes — he  finally  attains 
the  stage  of  hand  development  at  which  he  can  be  reasonably 
sure  that  the  movement  he  desires  so  much  to  make  can  be  sue- 


158  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

cessfully  carried  out.  When  he  is  finally  successful  in  his  attempt, 
how  his  every  look  and  expression  manifest  the  gratification  he 
so  certainly  feels. 

It  is  interesting  in  this  connection  to  note  that  the  earliest  ob- 
jects which  attract  the  eyes  of  the  infant  are  his  hands  and  fingers. 
The  hands  are  his  first  playthings.  That  they  should  be  the  first 
to  receive  his  visual  notice  is  but  natural.  They  are  always  flit- 
ting to  and  fro,  ever  before  his  eyes  and  constantly  passing  back 
and  forth  in  his  narrow  field  of  vision.  At  first,  as  you  know, the 
infant  is  very  short-sighted  and  can  observe  only  the  nearest 
objects.  It  seems  that  everything  conspires  to  bring  his  hand 
under  the  direct  notice  of  his  eye  for  at  least  the  first  one  hun- 
dred days  of  his  life. 

The  growth  and  development  of  the  mind  is  marked  by  three 
characteristics:  (1)  There  is  a  gradual  but  rapid  progression 
from  vague  unlocalized  impressions  to  distinct  definite  knowledge. 
(2)  Operations  become  more  perfect  and  are  performed  with  more 
facility  each  time  they  are  performed.  There  is  a  general  truth 
underlying  all  development,  either  mental  or  physical,  that  our 
powers  are  improved  and  strengthened  by  exercise.  (3)  There  is 
a  progress  from  the  simple  to  the  more  complex  processes  of 
mental  activity.  The  law  of  all  mental  growth  is  that  progress 
is  always  from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  from  the  concrete  to 
the  abstract. 

Not  the  least  valuable  of  the  conclusions  of  modern  experi- 
mental and  observational  psychology  is  that  there  is  a  uniform 
order  in  which  the  faculties  of  the  mind  unfold  or  develop.  At 
least  four  stages  are  observable.  (1)  The  sensation  stage.  Be- 
fore we  can  know  anything  about  ourselves  or  the  outside  world 
we  must  have  some  one  of  our  sense  organs  acted  upon.  Sense 
must  supply  the  raw  material  which  the  intellect  afterwards 
assimilates  and  uses.  (2)  The  perception  stage.  After  a  num- 
ber of  sensations  have  been  experienced  they  are  grouped  and 
classified  according  as  they  proceed  from  the  same  point  in 
space  and  arise  contemporaneously  in  time.  The  child  gets  the 
sensations  of  yellow,  roundness,  etc.,  and  then  comes  to  see 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  159 

that  they  proceed  from  the  same  point  in  space,  and  decides 
that  they  are  the  properties  or  qualities  of  one  single  object— the 
orange— which  he  now  apprehends.  (3)  The  stage  of  re-presenta- 
tion. Under  this  general  term  are  to  be  included  memory,  im- 
agination and  fancy.  (4)  The  stage  of  reflection  and  reasoning. 
There  is  no  break  in  this  process  of  development.  It  is  the  same 
mind  that  acts  in  all  these  stages  and  finds  expression  in  them. 
The  distinction  just  made  between  the  various  stages  of  develop- 
ment must  not  be  interpreted  to  mean  that  they  are  sharply  de- 
fined epochs  of  growth.  We  simply  mean  to  say  that  sensation 
must  precede  perception ;  perception  must  precede  memory  and 
imagination;  and  these  in  turn  are  developed  before  the  mind's 
power  to  reason  and  reflect. 

Furthermore,  every  form  of  mental  activity,  and  therefore 
mental  growth,  includes  an  act  of  attention  more  or  less  intense. 
Intellectual  growth,  as  we  have  seen,  is  directly  attendant  upon 
intellectual  activity.  It  is  also  directly  related  to  the  develop- 
ment of  will  power,  for  without  the  development  of  will  there  can 
be  no  prolonged  concentrated  effort  of  attention.  Thus  it  is 
seen  that  the  different  phases  of  mental  development  are  in  a 
way  interdependent.  All  mental  development  takes  place  by  the 
cooperation  of  two  sets  of  agencies.  The  first  may  be  denomi- 
nated subjective  factors,  the  second  objective  influences.  By  the 
subjective  factors  are  meant  the  fundamental  characteristics  with 
which  each  individual  mind  is  endowed  at  birth;  e.  g.,  native 
quickness,  keenness,  and  the  like.  Also  under  these  subjective  fac- 
tors must  be  included  the  influence  of  heredity.  Just  as  the  child 
is  born  with  its  father's  eyes,  and  mother's  nose  or  lips,  so  cer- 
tain intellectual  features  perdure  in  the  shape  of  inherited  mental 
tendencies. 

Under  the  objective  influences  must  be  included  all  those 
potencies  which  can  be  grouped  under  the  general  name  of  en- 
vironment. The  natural  environment  would  in  elude  the  physical 
conditions  by  which  the  child  is  surrounded.  Social  environment 
is  the  term  by  which  we  designate  the  group  of  individuals  with 
which  one  comes  in  intimate  contact.  Differences  in  one's  sur- 


160  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

roundings,  both  physical  and  social,  have  a  great  deal  to  do 
with  the  differences  in  capacity  and  disposition  which  we  meet  in 
different  persons.  It  is  a  fundamental  fact  that  no  two  individ- 
uals ever  come  under  exactly  the  same  influences.  Even  twins, 
born  into  the  same  family  at  the  same  time,  differ  in  their  envir- 
onment from  the  very  first.  Added  to  this  is  the  other  fact,  that 
owing  to  differences  in  their  original  capacities,  the  two  will  react 
quite  differently  to  the  same  impressions.  As  life  progresses,  each 
new  day  presents  new  external  influences  which  serve  to  differ- 
ence the  two  more  and  more.  The  school  into  which  they  enter, 
the  different  friendships,  various  commercial  interests,  and  the 
like,  all  help  to  widen  the  gap  between  the  two  as  far  as  their 
intellectual  development  is  concerned.  This  is  because  the  mind, 
just  like  the  body,  develops  upon  the  food  that  is  supplied  and 
which  it  assimilates.  Thus  it  is  that  no  individual  is  independent 
of  his  surroundings.  While  we  cannot  claim  that  circumstances 
make  the  man,  we  are  warranted  in  asserting  that  one's  sur- 
roundings go  a  long  way  in  determining  the  kind  of  person  he  is 
to  become.  The  function  of  the  teacher  is  to  supply  just  that 
environment  which  will  evoke  the  activities  most  essential  to  a 
high  standard  of  mental,  moral  and  physical  development.  If 
the  child  be  deficient  with  respect  to  his  visual  powers,  the 
teacher  is  called  upon  to  stimulate  these  same  powers.  If  the 
pupil  exercise  no  imagination  this  faculty  must  also  be  aroused 
into  activity  by  the  teacher.  After  the  teacher  has  a  definite 
knowledge  as  to  the  powers  and  capacities  of  the  pupil,  it  is  his 
chief  business  and  we  might  say,  his  only  function,  to  surround 
his  pupil  with  the  environment  that  will  best  conduce  to  ideal 
rounded-out  development.  The  true  educator  must  ever  keep 
before  his  mind's  eye  the  ideal  of  a  complete,  strong  and  well  de- 
veloped individual.  As  the  first  requisite  in  teaching  is  to  know 
the  child's  mind,  so  the  ultimate  end  of  education  is  to  prepare 
him  for  citizenship — to  prepare  him  physically,  intellectually  and 
morally. 

As  the  mind  unfolds,  one  of  the  chief  characteristics  of  its 
development  is  the  improvement  and  growth  of  the  individual's 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  161 

sense  capacity.  Of  course,  the  child  has  the  same  kind  of  eye, 
ear,  etc.,  as  is  found  in  the  full  grown  man,  but  his  sensations 
are  more  vague,  hazy,  and  less  defined  than  those  experienced 
in  adult  life.  The  growth  of  sense  capacity  involves  two  things : 
First,  increased  discriminative  ability;  second,  the  recognition 
of  sensations  by  their  color,  tones  or  local  signs. 

At  first  the  child  exercises  no  discriminative  ability.  His  sen- 
sations are  all  confused  with  one  another.  That  his  discrimina- 
tive ability  can  be  developed  to  a  high  degree  is  shown  by  the 
exceptional  delicacy  possessed  by  those  who  have  occasion  to 
employ  a  certain  sense  much  more  than  other  people.  You  have 
observed,  no  doubt,  the  fine  tactile  sensibility  of  the  blind,  the 
delicate  muscular  discrimination  of  a  wood  carver,  the  acute  audi- 
tory sensitiveness  of  the  skilled  musician,  and  the  keen  gustatory 
perceptions  of  the  professional  tea  taster  in  the  customs  serv- 
ice. The  case  of  Julia  Brace  is  pertinent  in  this  connection.  As 
a  pupil  of  the  school  for  the  blind  it  was  her  function  to  sort  the 
clothing  of  the  several  hundred  inmates  as  it  came  from  the 
laundry  each  week.  The  stupendous  task  of  properly  assorting 
these  garments,  numbering  into  hundreds,  was  done  entirely  upon 
the  basis  of  a  discrimination  made  by  the  sense  of  smell  alone. 

As  stated  above,  to  train  the  senses  means  simply  to  exercise 
them  so  as  to  make  them  efficient  and  accurate  in  observation 
and  discovery.  The  first  step  in  this  training  consists  in  the 
development  of  the  discriminative  ability  of  the  various  senses. 
By  this  means,  quickness  and  accuracy  of  sensation  is  assured. 
It  must  also  be  remembered  that  distinct  and  sharply  defined 
impressions  are  the  first  conditions  of  clear  imagination,  good 
memory,  and  precise  thinking.  If  a  child  always  confuses  his 
sense-impressions  — his  sensations  of  color,  taste,  touch,  form, 
etc.— his  mind  will  always  act  in  a  confused  manner  whether  it 
be  in  the  function  of  memory,  imagination  or  reasoning.  How 
magnificently  nature  has  provided  for  the  little  child  in  urging 
him  to  use  his  eyes,  his  ears,  his  hands  and  other  observing  pow- 
ers rather  than  take  knowledge  second  handed  from  mother, 
nurse  or  teacher. 
L.  P.— 11 


162  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

In  this  sense  knowledge,  the  child  comes  face  to  face  with  the 
object.  It  makes  an  impression  upon  him.  By  this  direct  face 
to  face  contact,  the  child  learns  more  than  canever  be  "  crammed  " 
into  him,  by,  the  intervention  of  another  mind.  We  are  fre- 
quently made  decidedly  weary  by  the  phrase  "  to  impart  instruc- 
tion" Someuseitin  claiming  that  the  teacher's  function  is  "to 
impart  instruction,"  as  if  knowledge  could  be  done  up  in  ready 
made  packages  and  foisted  upon  the  pupils!  And  yet  there  are 
still  some  persons  abroad  in  the  land  who,  posing  as  teachers, 
are  actually  endeavoring  to  impart  knowledge.  What  ruination 
such  pseudo-teachers  have  wrought!  How  many  child  minds 
have  been  crippled  and  maimed  because  of  such  folly!  The 
function  of  the  teacher  is  simply  to  lead  the  child  in  his  observa- 
tions and  experiments.  Teacher=Leader.  The  true  teacher 
simply  supplies  the  children  with  suitable  objects  for  the  exercise 
of  their  sense  organs.  Can  you  teach  the  child  how  to  reason? 
No  more  than  you  can  teach  the  child  bow  to  see.  No  more 
than  you  can  teach  the  bir$  how  to  fly.  You  must  simply  let  it 
fly.  Let  the  child  learn  to  see  as  you  would  let  the  bird  learn  to 
fly. .  Train  the  senses  of  the  child  and  the  rest  of  his  mental  de- 
velopment will  take  care  of  itself.  The  child  that  "senses"  well 
will  always  reason  accurately  and  remember  correctly.  A  little 
boy  was  given  four  wooden  balls  in  the  kindergarten.  When  asked 
how  manyhe  had,  he  answered  "four."  Buthowdo  youknowyou 
have  four?  "  Why  I  see  two  and  I  see  two  more  and  /  thinked 
four."  The  successful  teacher  is  the  sense  teacher— I  almost  said 
is  the  sensible  teacher.  Not  that  this  work  must  needs  be  disor- 
ganized and  unsystematic.  The  kindergarten  occupations,  such 
as  paper-folding,  modeling  in  clay,  stick  laying,  the  "sense" 
plays,  and  little  science  lessons  are,  if  anything,  systematic  and 
orderly.  The  ability  to  educate  the  senses  of  the  children  whom 
he  is  endeavoring  to  lead,  is  in  fact  the  true  measure  of  the 
teacher's  power  and  value  as  a  real  instructor.  "Educate"— 
What  does  the  word  mean?  Look  at  its  etymology — "  educo  "—. 
to  lead  from  or  out  of.  So  the  true  teacher  leads  the  child  upward 
and  onward  in  its  path  of  development  by  training  the  senses— the 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  163 

windows  of  his  infant  mind — to  give  a  true  picture  of  the  outside 
world  in  which  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being.  You  know 
a  good  building  requires  not  only  good  foundations  but  good 
materials.  Suppose  you  had  a  foundation  of  the  best  Westerly 
granite  and  erected  thereon  a  superstructure  of  thin,  warped 
cottonwood  boards— would  you  have  a  good  building?  Now, 
our  knowledge  of  the  outside  world  is  gained  through  the  senses. 
This  is  the  material  from  which  our  world  is  constructed.  If  the 
sense  experiences  are  vague  and  indefinite,  the  knowledge  based 
thereon  will  be  vague  and  hazy. 


LESSON  XIV. 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES. — Continued. 

A  SHORT  time  ago  I  visited  what  to  me  is  very  nearly  an  ideal 
Kindergarten.  I  merely  give  you  one  of  its  chapters — a  very 
small  one — culled  from  the  morning  exercises.  It  is  simply  one  of 
those  little  stories  with  which  Kindergarten  lore  abounds.  The 
children  had  just  come  from  their  homes  with  expectant  faces 
wreathed  in  gladsome  smiles.  Of  course,  the  story  loses  much  by 
being  taken  out  of  its  local  setting,  and  is  reproduced  here  in  merest 
outline.  The  eager,  delighted  expressions  of  the  children  as  the 
story  progressed  cannot  be  reproduced.  The  whole  group  — 
twenty  in  all — are  seated  in  a  circle,  every  eye  on  the  teacher  who 
sits  as  one  of  the  number. 

Teacher.  "Now,  children,  how  many  of  you  have  at  home 
things  you  are  very  careful  of  and  very  fond  of?  What  is  yours, 
Stuart?" 

Thechildren  give  in  turn  various  answers,  telling  of  their  favor- 
ite playthings  and  keepsakes.  When  each  has  been  questioned, 
the  teacher  continues : 

Teacher.  "Where  do  you  keep  these  favorite  things,  these 
treasures  of  yours,  keepsakes,  as  they  are  called,  so  that  they 
will  not  be  harmed? " 

Most  of  the  children  say  in  boxes  of  some  sort,  kept  safe  either 
by  covers  or  by  lock  and  key ;  some  say  theirs  have  no  covers  of 
any  kind. 

Teacher.  ' '  These  little  boxes  of  yours  are  your  treasure  boxes. 
When  I  was  a  little  girl  I  had  a  treasure  box  which  my  father 
made  me." 

Then  follows  a  lively  description  in  detail  of  this  treasure  box 
of  hers,  special  stress  being  laid  upon  the  neat,  careful  way  in 
(164) 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  165 

which  all  the  contents  were  laid  in,  each  thing  having  a  little 
compartment  or  corner  of  its  own. 

"Now,  I  am  going  to  show  you  some  treasure  boxes  different 
from  any  of  yours  or  mine,  some  of  Mother  Nature's  treasure 
boxes." 

She  then  shows  them  two  wild  cucumber  pods,  one  of  which 
was  closed,  the  other  riper  and  "  unlocked  "  —  open  at  one  end. 
Shecalls  their  attention  to  the  prickly  green  cover  of  the  box,  and 
shows  how  tightly  and  beautifully  "locked  "  it  is.  Then  passing 
them  around  that  each  child  might  see  and  handle  the  pods  for 
themselves,  she  tells  them  to  notice  the  soft  white  lining  of  the 
"unlocked"  box,  and  to  observe  carefully  the  four  brown  seeds— 
the  "treasures  "—so  neatly  and  orderly  arranged  by  Mother  Na- 
ture, in  their  little  cells.  Then  the  children  are  asked  to  guess 
other  of  Mother  Nature's  treasure  boxes.  One  child  has  a  peach 
in  her  lunch  basket,  and  another  an  apple.  These  are  both  ex- 
amined with  a  view  to  discover  the  hidden  treasures  —  the  seeds 
they  contained.  Then  the  teacher  continues:  "Now,  if  you 
should  ask  the  tree  or  the  plant  what  it  loves  and  cares  for 
better  than  anything  else,  it  would  say — if  it  could  talk  to  you — 
its  little  treasure  box,  because  all  through  the  summer,  it  has 
been  taking  in  the  sunshine,  and  drinking  in  the  water  only  for 
the  sake  of  this  little  seed — its  baby — to  make  it  strong  and 
healthy,  so  that  it  could  grow  on  after  the  mother  plant  had 
died.  Now,  I  want  each  one  of  you  to  bring  me  to-morrow  one 
of  Mother  Nature's  treasure  boxes." 

So  the  talk  closed  for  that  morning,  but  was  taken  up  and  car- 
ried on  successive  mornings  after  that,  the  teacher  calling  atten- 
tion to  the  different  kinds  of  boxes  in  which  the  seeds  were  kept, 
the  variety  and  the  form  of  the  seeds  themselves,  the  part  played 
by  the  wind  in  scattering  them,  as,  for  example,  the  milkweed, 
the  dandelion  and  the  clematis,  the  bird's  share  in  this  work,  etc. 
Ever  since  this  story  was  first  told  them,  and  it  is  now  many  weeks 
ago,  the  children  have  continued  to  bring  to  the  teacher  "  treas- 
ure boxes"  of  all  sorts  and  kinds,  not  even  forgetting  them  when 
they  were  told  later  the  stories  about  the  leaves  and  began  their 


166  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

collection  of  those.  With  the  specimens  brought  in,  the  teacher 
has  made  a  chart,  and  the  feathery  seeds  of  thistle,  clematis, 
milkweed  and  the  like  make  a  very  ornamental  border  for  the 
walls  of  their  schoolroom. 

Now  is  this  not  a  better  method  of  procedure  for  both  the 
child's  present  pleasure  and  future  mental  growth,  and  does  it 
not  make  him  a  more  valuable  man  or  woman,  a  better  citizen, 
than  the  exercise  the  writer  has  seen  time  and  again  in  one  of  the 
primary  departments  of  our  common  schools,  viz.,  where  the 
task  prescribed  for  the  child  was  that  the  word  "  cat "  should  be 
written  neatly  on  the  slate  forty  times  ?  At  best,  with  the  latter 
method,  the  mind  will  have  absolutely  no  power  of  expanding 
from  within;  it  can  be  no  more  than  a  mere  passive  recipient, 
able  only  to  discharge  the  undigested,  unassimilated  mass  of 
facts  which  has  once  been  stuffed  into  it,  paralyzing  its  very  spon- 
taneity in  its  endeavors  to  make  new  discoveries  and  gain  new 
facts;  in  other  words,  no  real  knowledge  is  gained.  That  educa- 
tion is  best  which  seeks,  not  to  impart  knowledge,  but  to  develop 
mental  force. 

I  am  reminded  in  this  connection  of  an  interesting  little  allu- 
sion made  by  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  in  his  delightful 
little  essay  on  "  Processes."  It  is  an  account  of  a  schoolboy  who 
was  found  in  great  distress  over  his  lessons.  When  asked  what 
the  peculiar  difficulty  was,  he  stated  this  arduous  problem : 

"  If  John  has  two  red  apples,  and  Charlie  has  two,  how  many 
red  apples  have  they  both  together?  " 

"  Is  that  hard?  "  was  asked. 

"  Very  hard,"  the  boy  said,  sadly. 

"But  surely,  my  boy,  you  already  know  that  two  and  two 
make  four ;  there  can  be  no  trouble  about  that  ?  " 

"Of  course  not,"  was  the  pathetic  response.  " Of  course  I 
know  that  well  enough.  But  the  process  I  It's  the  process  that 
wears  me  out." 

And  do  not  the  facts  which  can  be  observed  as  we  visit  the 
majority  of  the  public  schools  lend  force  to  this  piece  of  infantine 
sarcasm  ?  Hosts  of  things  that  come  so  naturally  to  the  child's 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  167 

mind  that  they  might  really  be  taken  for  granted,  are  virtually 
taken  from  him  and  then  offered  to  him  again  in  such  a  cut 
and  dried  formal  shape,  smothered  under  technical  definitions 
and  "processes,"  that  he  is  almost  made  unconscious  that  he 
ever  knew  them.  Not  only  is  this  true  of  arithmetic,  though  I 
believe  that  this  is  the  worst  taught  of  any  subject  of  the  com- 
mon school  curriculum.  Is  it  not  true  that  many  children  who 
have  grown  up  under  educated  influences  write  better  English  — 
certainly  more  idiomatic  and  often  more  correct — before  study- 
ing English  grammar  than  afterwards?  They  write  as  they 
speak,  by  ear,  and  the  complex  rules  confuse  more  than  they  help. 
Of  all  modern  innovations  that  have  grown  up,  the  most  im- 
portant is  the  systematic  culture  of  the  powers  of  observation. 
As  Herbert  Spencer  so  tersely  puts  it:  "After  long  ages  of  blind- 
ness men  are  at  last  seeing  that  the  spontaneous  activity  of  the 
observing  faculties  in  children  has  a  meaning  and  a  use."  To 
this  awakening  is  attributed  the  well-conceived  but  ill-conducted 
system  of  object  lessons.  It  can  be  said  without  fear  of  success- 
ful contradiction  that  if  the  education  of  the  senses  be  neglected, 
all  subsequent  education  will  partake  of  a  vagueness,  haziness, 
drowsiness  or  inefficiency  which  will  never  admit  of  cure.  The 
systematic  development  of  the  senses  makes  a  place  for— yes, 
makes  absolutely  essential— the  object  lesson.  By  this  is  meant 
the  simple  presentation  to  the  pupil's  senses  of  some  natural  ob- 
ject, e.g.,  a  piece  of  coal,  an  ear  of  corn,  a  hickory  nut,  some 
animal  or  plant,  etc.  In  carrying  out  the  object  lesson  appeal 
should  be  made  to  more  than  one  sense.  You  are  not  "cultivat- 
ing the  observing  powers"  when  you  appeal  to  the  eye  alone. 
You  must  appeal  to  as  many  of  the  senses  as  possible,  for  each 
sense  gives  to  the  mind  a  different  picture  of  the  outside  world. 
For  example,  the  cavity  left  by  an  extracted  tooth  feels  larger 
when  the  tongue  touches  it  than  when  seen  with  the  eye.  Not 
long  ago  the  writer  observed  some  children  cracking  hickory  nuts 
on  the  curbstone.  He  happened  to  have  in  his  pocket  some 
hickory  nuts  which  were  quite  a  good  deal  larger  than  those  pos- 
sessed by  the  children.  Each  child  was  told  to  close  his  eyes  and 


168  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

one  of  the  large  nuts  was  placed  in  his  hand.  Not  one  of  the  five 
children  could  tell  that  it  was  a  nut  by  the  sense  of  touch  alone. 
All  had  to  depend  upon  vision,  though  they  had  all  been  observ- 
ing hickory 'nuts  with  their  touch  sense.  These  children  were 
deficient  in  their  powers  of  tactile  observation.  To  induce  in  the 
child  a  well  rounded-out  development,  it  is  necessary  to  train  all 
the  senses ;  the  ear  should  not  be  trained  at  the  expense  of  the 
eye,  or  the  eye  at  the  expense  of  the  hand,  etc.,  else  the  child  be- 
comes one-sided  in  his  development.  The  value  of  the  object  les- 
son depends  for  its  efficiency  as  a  mind  developer  upon  the  extent 
to  which  all  the  observing  powers  of  the  class  are  put  to  use  and 
called  into  exercise.  Above  all  things  the  teacher  should  never 
tell  the  pupils  about  the  object,  but  should  ever  stimulate  them 
to  observe  — see,  touch,  taste,  hear,  smell,  etc.,  for  themselves. 
A  daily  walk  with  a  good  observer  will  do  more  to  develop  the 
faculties  than  the  most  elaborate  of  school  exercises  where  learn- 
ing is  by  rule.  Exhaustive,  painstaking,  thorough  observation 
is  an  element  in  all  true  professional  success,  be  the  person  a  phy- 
sician, engineer,  teacher  or  preacher ;  be  he  lawyer,  merchant  or 
railroad  conductor. 

A  wholesome  change  that  has  attended  the  introduction  of  ob- 
servational studies  in  our  schools  is  the  growing  desire  to  make 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge  a  pleasant  rather  than  a  painful  ex- 
ercise. The  effort  to  make  all  education  interesting  is  indeed  a 
child  of  the  present.  As  long  as  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  is 
made  to  be  habitually  distasteful,  as  long  as  it  is  a  " grind"— 
to  use  the  vernacular  of  the  college  campus— so  long  will  there  be 
a  prevailing  tendency  to  discontinue  it  when  free  from  the  co- 
ercive restraint  of  parents  and  teachers. 

No  man  has  investigated  the  subject  of  educational  method 
with  such  keen  insight,  with  such  excellent  tact,  and  with  such  a 
far-seeing,  judicial  mind  as  has  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  His  book 
on  "  Education"  testifies  to  his  right  to  be  called  the  father  of 
modern  educational  reform.  We  cannot  forbear  making  a  rather 
lengthy  quotation  from  him  at  this  point.  It  should  be  inefface- 
ably  stereotyped  on  the  brain  of  every  parent  and  teacher: 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  169 

"  See  the  way  in  which,  by  this  method,  the  intelligent  mother 
conducts  her  lessons  step  by  step;  she  familiarizes  her  little  boy 
with  the  names  of  the  simpler  attributes,  hardness,  softness, 
color,  taste,  size,  etc.,  in  doing  which  she  finds  him  eagerly  help 
by  bringing  this  to  show  her  that  it  is  red,  and  the  other  to 
make  her  feel  that  it  is  hard,  as  fast  as  she  gives  him  words  for 
these  properties.  Each  additional  property  as  she  draws  his  at- 
tention to  it  in  some  fresh  thing  which  he  brings  to  her,  she  takes 
care  to  mention  in  connection  with  those  he  already  knows,  so 
that  by  the  natural  tendency  to  imitate  he  may  get  into  the 
habit  of  repeating  them  one  after  the  other.  Gradually  as  there 
occur  cases  in  which  he  omits  to  name  one  or  more  of  the  proper- 
ties he  has  become  acquainted  with,  she  introduces  the  practice  of 
asking  him  whether  there  is  not  something  more  that  he  can  tell 
her  about  the  thing  he  has  got.  Probably  he  does  not  under- 
stand. After  letting  him  puzzle  awhile  she  tells  him,  perhaps 
laughing  at  him  a  little  for  his  failure.  A  few  recurrences  of  this 
and  he  perceives  what  is  to  be  done.  When  next  she  says  she 
knows  something  more  about  the  object  than  he  has  told  her,  his 
pride  is  roused;  he  looks  at  it  intently;  he  thinks  overall  that 
he  has  heard ;  and  the  problem  being  easy  presently  finds  it  out. 
He  is  full  of  glee  at  his  success,  and  she  sympathizes  with  him. 
In  common  with  every  child  he  delights  in  the  discovery  of  his 
powers.  He  wishes  for  more  victories,  and  goes  in  quest  of  more 
things  about  which  to  tell  her.  As  his  faculties  unfold,  she  adds 
quality  after  quality  to  his  list,  progressing  from  hardness  and 
softness  to  roughness  and  smoothness, from  color  to  polish, from 
simple  bodies  to  composite  ones— thus  constantly  complicating 
the  problem  as  he  gains  competence;  constantly  taxing  his  at- 
tention and  memory  to  a  greater  extent;  constantly  maintaining 
his  interest  by  supplying  him  with  new  impressions  such  as  his 
mind  can  assimilate,  and  constantly  gratifying  him  by  conquests 
over  such  small  difficulties  as  he  can  master.  In  doing  this  she 
is  manifestly  but  following  out  that  spontaneous  process  that 
was  going  on  during  a  still  earlier  period,  simply  aiding  self-evo- 
lution; and  in  aiding  it  in  the  mode  suggested  by  the  boy's  in- 


170  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

stinctive  behavior  to  her.  Manifestly,  too,  the  course  she  is 
pursuing  is  the  one  best  calculated  to  establish  a  habit  of  ex' 
haustive  observation,  which  is  the  professed  aim  of  these  lessons. 
To  tell  a  child  this  and  show  it  the  other  is  not  to  teach  it  how  to 
observe,  but  to  make  it  a  mere  recipient  of  another's  observa- 
tions ;  a  proceeding  which  weakens  rather  than  strengthens  its 
powers  of  self-instruction,  which  deprives  it  of  the  pleasures  re- 
sulting from  successful  activity,  which  presents  this  all-attract- 
ive knowledge  under  the  aspect  of  formal  tuition,  and  which 
thus  generates  that  indifference  and  even  disgust  with  which 
these  object  lessons  are  not  infrequently  regarded." 

The  object  lesson,  to  serve  its  true  function,  should  be  carried 
on  in  quite  a  different  manner  from  that  customarily  made  use 
of.  The  real  value  of  the  object  lesson  depends  entirely  on  the 
extent  to  which  the  observing  powers  of  the  pupils  have  been  em- 
ployed. The  teacher  must  never  tell  what  the  object  is  or  of 
what  it  consists,  but  simply  stimulate  the  child  to  observe  for 
himself.  Now  in  the  first  place  the  attention  of  the  child  should 
be  directed  to  the  object  itself  with  its  manifold  qualities,  and 
not  to  the  general  truth  which  the  object  lesson  is  intended  to 
illustrate.  Remember  always  that  the  true  order  of  mental  pro- 
cedure is  ever  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract.  The  mind  must 
be  introduced  to  principles  only  through  numerous  examples. 
Education  can  only  proceed  naturally,  therefore  most  success- 
fully, when  this  law  is  followed.  As  teachers,  then,  in  using  the 
object  lesson,  seek  first  of  all  an  interesting  object  with  many 
qualities  which  are  reasonably  apparent  rather  than  deeply 
hidden.  Then  when  this  is  done,  seek  to  interest  the  child  in  the 
object  and  the  object  only.  Do  this  by  having  its  qualities 
named  one  at  a  time.  Also  it  is  important  to  use  an  object  in  its 
natural  setting  so  far  as  possible.  Don't  use  a  picture  of  a  cat 
when  you  can  get  a  live  cat,any  more  than  you  would  attempt 
to  teach  the  application  of  the  table  of  weights  and  measures  in 
your  arithmetic  class  without  using  an  actual  pair  of  scales  such 
as  the  grocer  or  butcher  employs.  The  true  teacher  will  teach  by 
reference  to  the  concrete  and  the  concrete  alone  as  far  as  possi- 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  171 

ble.  In  "  Dry  Measure"  he  will  use  the  actual  measures  which 
are  employed  in  daily  business  transactions.  In  teaching 
"Liquid  Measure"  he  will  "  beg:,  borrow  or  steal"  the  concrete 
measuring  tins  such  as  his  milkman  uses,  and  so  on.  In  every 
possible  manner  he  will  make  use  of  the  object  lesson  in  teaching. 
Who  ever  heard  of  a  successful  teacher  of  the  interesting  subject 
of  physics  who  depended  on  the  text-book  alone.  It  has  been 
attempted  by  many  who  aspire  to  be  teachers,  but  a  kind  Provi- 
dence and  American  practical  common  sense  is  rapidly  deci- 
mating the  number  of  this  ilk.  I  can  remember  when  a  boy  of 
such  a  would-be  teacher.  Our  class  work  in  physics  consisted 
chiefly  in  questions  and  answers  on  the  text— a  tedious,  dry 
book  called  by  the  very  comprehensive  and  indefinite  name  of 
''Natural  Philosophy."  The  usual  order  of  questions  was  some- 
thing as  follows: 

Teacher.    Where  does  the  lesson  begin,  Nellie? 

Ans.    On  page  97,  near  the  middle. 

Teacher.    Where  does  it  end,  Willie? 

Ans.    I  don't  remember  the  page. 

Teacher.  You  stupid  boy,  not  to  remember  the  page  on  which 
the  lesson  ends.  You  may  stay  in  at  recess.  Edna,  you  tell 
where  the  lesson  ends. 

Ans.    At  the  fourth  line  from  the  bottom  on  page  105. 

Teacher.  The  entire  class  will  now  repeat  in  concert  the  page 
on  which  the  lesson  ends.  Loud,  now,  so  Willie  Can  hear. 

This  is  now  done  and  one-third  of  the  time  is  already  gone. 
Then  follows  a  cut  and  dried  recitation  on  the  interesting  subject 
of  electricity — on  such  themes  as  the  induction  coil,  magnet,  elec- 
tric motor,  production  of  heat  by  electricity,  electric  light,  with- 
out a  single  illustration  or  piece  of  apparatus,  when  the  teacher 
might  have  constructed  a  crude  electric  battery  and  with  glass 
or  sealing  wax,  a  silk  handkerchief,  or  a  piece  of  flannel,  or  at 
least  with  a  cheap  rubber  comb  and  a  black  cat,  shown  us  some 
of  the  manifestations  and  phenomena  of  this  force  so  fascinatingly 
interesting  to  every  child.  But,  no !  Every  word  in  the  class 
was  utterly  unmeaning  because  divorced  from  everything  practi- 


172  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

cal.  Furthermore,  at  the  same  time  that  the  writer  was  slowly 
grinding  his  way  in  this  treadmill  class  so  distasteful  to  him,  he 
was  engaged  at  home  in  studying  a  book  handed  to  him  by  a 
real  benefactor — the  title  of  the  book  being  "Boys'  Own  Book  of 
Home  Experiments."  Portions  of  the  book  were  read  eagerly 
every  night  and  interesting  but  simple  experiments  performed  in 
the  order  indicated.  Oh,  how  intensely  interesting  those  winter 
nights  were!  With  what  avidity  were  its  treasure  pages  read 
and  devoured  !  How  it  took  preference  over  and  above  all  to- 
boggan parties  and  sleigh  rides,  while  even  my  new  "Barney  and 
Berry  "  club-skates  lost  their  charm.  But  do  you  know  that  all 
this  time  I  was  doing  this  supplementary  reading  and  perform- 
ing these  experiments  on  Light,  Heat,  Sound  and  Electricity, 
the  thought  never  once  occurred  to  me  that  the  subject  which  oc- 
cupied me  at  home  so  assiduously  and  industriously  was  at  all 
related  to  the  course  on  "Natural  Philosophy,"  which  was  being 
given  in  school.  It  never,  for  a  single  instant,  seemed  that  they 
belonged  to  the  same  regime.  And  still  further,  one  day  the 
writer,  proud  and  delighted  with  his  success  in  constructing  an 
electrophorus  which  worked  perfectly,  took  it  to  school  to  show 
his  mates,  only  to  have  his  so-called  teacher  not  merely  ridicule 
it  himself,  but  take  it  to  his  desk  and  make  it  the  object  of  ridi- 
cule on  the  part  of  the  other  pupils,  by  holding  it  up  before  the 
whole  school  and  sneering  at  it  with  words  of  keen-edged  sar- 
casm. Of  course,  it  was  crudely  constructed—being  made  of  two 
tin  pans,  surreptitiously  secured , together  with  sealing  wax,  from 
the  pantry,  and  insulated  with  a  cheap  broken  glass  pestle  kindly 
supplied  by  a  good-hearted  druggist;  but  it  did  the  work  desired 
and  did  it  well,  illustrating  some  of  the  most  fundamental  phe- 
nomena of  electricity.  Can  you  wonder  that  the  writer,  from 
that  day  had  no  respect,  much  less  love  for  that  teacher?  But 
you  interject—"  Oh,  well,  that  was  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago ! " 
Well,  so  it  was,  but  this  particular  teacher  is  not  dead  yet,  and  is 
still  "imparting  instruction"  in  the  same  old  way.  If  he  were 
the  only  one  of  this  class,  there  would  be  much  cause  for  congrat- 
ulation, but  sad  to  say  this  family  of  pseudo-teachers  is  a  large 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  173 

one  and  holds  to  life  with  exceeding  tenacity.  Not  two  weeks 
ago  in  a  school,  which  its  patrons,  like  true  patriotic  citizens, call 
the ."  best  in  the  state,"  the  following  occurrence  took  place  un- 
der the  writer's  own  observation. 

The  class  was  reciting  from  some  little,inferior  work  on  ''Nat- 
ural History."  The  lesson  was  about  the  grasshopper.  One  boy 
discovered  on  a  live  specimen  wha,t  he  thought  were  the  organs  of 
hearing.  The  book  also  made  the  claim  that  grasshoppers  hear. 
But  an  enterprising  little  fellow  had  read  the  excellent  article  in 
the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  and  found  it  stated  that  grasshop- 
pers do  not  hear.  At  the  same  time  he  wrote  letters  to  one  or 
two  professional  entomologists,  who  concurred  in  the  latter 
opinion.  Thus  fortified  he  approached  his  teacher  in  a  respectful 
manner  and  told  her  of  his  discovery.  Instead  of  congratulating 
him  on  his  "find"  and  commending  him  for  earnest  endeavor, 
this  particular  teacher  severely  reprimanded  him  for  disagreeing 
with  the  book  used  by  the  class. 

How  refreshing  it  is  to  turn  from  such  instances  to  those 
schools  where  the  pupils  are  led  in  their  observations  by  a  skillful, 
practical  teacher  to  see  the  essence  and  meaning  of  things.  Less 
than  a  year  ago  I  visited  just  such  a  school.  It  was  in  a  town  of 
3,000  inha-bitants  made  up  principally  of  horny  handed  toilers 
and  their  families.  The  teacher  of  the  high  school  was  a  self- 
made  man  but  had  the  gift  to  teach  and  teach  clearly.  His  class 
in  physics  was  studying  electricity,and  the  boys  would  have  me, 
though  a  stranger,  stay  after  school  to  see  an  electric  motor 
which  they  had  themselves  constructed  with  the  sympathetic  in- 
terest of  their  teacher.  In  the  class  no  text-book  was  used, 
though  ten  or  a  dozen,  by  different  authors,  were  on  the  table  of 
their  rudely  constructed  laboratory.  By  enlisting  the  sympathy 
and  enthusiastic  interest  of  his  pupils,the  teacher  had  awakened 
the  community  so  that  it  was  an  easy  matter  to  secure  for  the 
work  in  physics  alone  about  $300  worth  of  apparatus,  besides  the 
considerable  number  of  home  made  instruments  constructed  by 
the  teacher  and  his  pupils.  Is  it  not  better  tha,t  the  average 
schoolboy  know  one  single  concrete  fact  in  physics,  e.  g.,  how 


174  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

to  wire  an  electric  bell,  than  for  him  to  be  able  to  recite  Steele, 
Gage,  Norton,  or  Quackenbos  by  the  yard  and  hour  in  an  un- 
meaning manner? 

But  this  may  be  a  digression.  It  may ,  however,  be  pertinent  to 
reiterate  that  first  of  all  the  object  itself  must  attract  the  atten- 
tion of  the  pupils  of  the  class,  and  not  the  general  relations  and 
principles  which  the  object  is  supposed  to  represent,and  which  can 
by  means  of  the  higher  powers  of  reasoning  be  deduced  from  it.  To 
illustrate  what  is  here  meant,  a  case  in  point  is  cited.  A  teacher 
was  using  a  squirrel  as  an  object  lesson.  Unfortunately  it  was  not 
a  real  living  squirrel  but  a  well  executed  picture  instead.  The 
teacher  laid  especial  stress  upon  the  qualities  belonging  to  squir- 
rels that  are  similar  to  certain  qualities  in  children  and  called  atten- 
tention  to  similar  relationships, but  failed  to  pay  any  definite  atten- 
tion to  the  squirrel  in  and  of  itself.  Consequently  when  one  of  the 
brightest  pupils  was  asked  the  size  of  the  squirrel,  the  reply  was 
given:  " About  so  big,"  holding  her  hands  out  almost  three  feet 
apart.  On  further  questioning  it  was  found  that  she  seriously 
thought  that  a  squirrel  was  "As  big  as  a  little  boy  or  girl."  It  is 
decidedly  better  to  lay  the  emphasis  upon  the  object  itself  in  the 
first  stages  of  this  form  of  teaching.  The  folio  wing  is  a  case  right  in 
line  with  this  suggestion.  A  teacher,  who  had  become  thoroughly 
tired  of  some  of  her  pupils  saying  that  butter  grew  on  ice,  or  was 
made  of  eggs,  or  grew  on  butter  cups,  took  the  right  method  to 
clear  their  minds  of  such  notions  when  with  a  little  toy  churn  she 
made  a  thimbleful  of  butter  at  school  in  the  presence  of  her  pupils 
as  an  object  lesson. 

The  object  lesson  could  be  extended  to  every  department  of 
instruction  and  should  cover  a  wide  range  of  facts.  Do  not  limit 
yourself  to  the  contents  of  home  or  schoolyard,  but  include  the 
forest  and  field,  the  river  and  brook,  the  seashore  and  stone 
quarry.  For  the  purpose  of  extending  the  range  of  observation 
for  children,  we  hope  that  the  German  custom  of  school 
children,  accompanied  by  their  teacher,  taking  long  walks  into 
the  country,  will  soon  be  adopted  here  in  our  own  land.  The 
trustees  and  school  directors  may  tell  you  it  is  a  waste  of  time 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSES.  175 

for  you  to  take  a  walk  through  the  woods  and  across  the  fields 
for  the  purpose  of  observing  and  calling  the  attention  of  the  chil- 
dren to  the  birds  and  insects,  flowers  and  trees,  leaves  and  peb- 
bles, but  by  cautious  studied  effort  you  may  succeed  in  effecting 
an  arrangement  whereby  you  are  enabled  to  bring  the  children 
into  face  to  face  contact  with  Mother  Nature  at  least  once  a  week. 
If  you  succeed  your  pupils  will,  in  the  years  to  come,  rise  and  call 
you  blessed.  But  if  the  powers  over  you  insist  that  it  is  far  bet- 
ter to  read  about  "Ann's  hat,"  "Ned's  top/'  and  " Tom's  nag," 
then  do  the  best  you  can  by  claiming,  each  year,  an  outing  day, 
e.  g.,  the  first  of  May— to  be  an  annual  field  day.  By  and  by  you 
will,  with  the  cooperation  of  other  wide  awake  teachers,  convince 
the  patrons  that  training  the  powers  of  observation  in  early  child- 
hood is  more  important  than  a  knowledge  of  all  the  capitals  and 
their  locations,  better  for  both  the  child's  mind  and  body  than 
their  usual  problems  in  primary  arithmetic,  and  infinitely  more 
valuable  than  their  ability  to  name  the  presidents  in  the  order 
of  their  election,  or  whether  1111  men  were  killed  in  a  certain 
battle,  or  only  1110.  You  can,  however,  do  this  much  and  there 
is  no  excuse  for  you  if  you  do  not  do  it.  You  can  insist  on  your 
pupils  bringing  specimens  of  leaves,  flowers,  bugs,  rocks,  fish,  and 
the  like  to  the  school  for  the  purpose  of  making  possible  a  nat- 
ural history  collection  of  the  animal  and  vegetable  life  of  the 
community  in  which  they  live.  Every  teacher  should  have  a 
school  museum  made  up  almost  entirely  of  interesting  objects 
that  the  pupils  have  collected. 

The  object  lesson  can  possibly  aim  at  nothing  other  than  the 
training  of  the  observing  powers  themselves.  But  as  schools  are  at 
present  constructed,  the  best  training  of  the  observing  powers  lies 
outside  the  range  of  school  exercises.  Higgin son  again  in  his  own 
inimitable  way  speaks  to  the  point  here.  "  In  the  study  of  natural 
history  I  have  heard  exercises  with  <  object-lessons '  that  seemed 
to  be  especially  contrived  to  stultify  the  human  intellect;  and  this 
especially  in  some  normal  schools,  where  one  young  pupil  stands 
up  before  the  others,  making  believe  that  she  knows  everything, 
and  her  classmates  sit  before  her  making  believe  that  they  know 


176  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

nothing.  It  is  necessarily  all  a  form  and  a  'process.'  They  go 
through  the  questions  which  the  children  are  supposed  to  ask 
about  the  object;  and,  of  course,  if  the  real  children  do  not  ask 
the  right  questions,they  must  be  taught  to  ask  them.  They  must 
wish  to  know  what  they  ought  to  wish  to  know,  not  what  they 
really  desire.  When  the  young  teacher  faces  real  children,  there- 
fore, instead  of  studying  their  actual  minds,  she  proceeds  on  a 
method  previously  arranged. 

Perhaps  it  is  a  stuffed  bird  which  she  holds  up  before  them. 
She  says,  as  she  has  been  taught  to  say,  '  Children,  what  is  this? ' 
One  boy  shouts,  'It's  a  jay.'  Another  says,  almost  simulta- 
neously, '  It's  a  blue-jay.'  Then  the  teacher  explains  to  them  that 
this  is  not  the  proper  answer  at  all.  They  must  answer  first,  'A 
bird,'  and  then  must  go  on,  with  due  surprise,  to  the  information 
that  it  has  two  legs  and  ha.s  wings ;  and  by  and  by,  after  plenty 
of  systematic  preparation,  they  may  proceed  to  the  fact  that 
the  bird  is  a  jay,  and  even  a  blue-jay— all  this  being  something 
which  they  knew  perfectly  well  already,  but  must  not  be  permitted 
to  recognize  in  any  disorderly  or  unmethodical  form.  The  con- 
sequence is  that  the  bright  and  observing  children,  who  ought 
to  be  leaders  of  the  class,  are  deadened  and  discouraged,  and  all 
the  laurels  go  to  the  unobservant  and  stupid,  who  never  noticed 
a  bird  in  their  lives,  and  would  not  do  anything  so  unseemly  as  to 
pronounce  any  stuffed  object  a  blue-jay  until  the  teacher  had  led 
them  up  to  it  by  a  logical  and  irresistible  process."  The  training 
of  the  child's  observing  powers  is,  at  least,  the  chapter  in  education 
in  which  the  parent  can  cooperate  with  the  teacher  to  the  best  ad- 
vantage. In  seeking  to  cultivate  the  observing  powers  of  your 
pupil  by  use  of  the  object  lesson  and  other  means,  you  accomplish 
four  things  for  him,  each  one  of  which  is  vitally  important. 

(1)  You  make  his  knowledge  more  accurate  and  clearly  defined. 

(2)  You  make  his  knowledge  more  comprehensive  and  complete. 

(3)  You  develop  his  mental  power  and  intellectual  capacity. 

(4)  You  make  his  acquisition  of  knowledge  pleasant  and  de- 
lightful because  you  follow  the  natural  order— ll  first  the  blade, 
then  the  ear,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear." 


LESSON  XV. 

THE  CONTENTS  OF  A  CHILD'S  MIND  ON  ENTERING  SCHOOL. 

MORE  than  twenty  years  ago  an  association  of  teachers  in 
Germany,  at  Berlin,  undertook  to  investigate  the  stock  of  ideas 
which  children  possess  at  the  time  of  entering  school.* 

This  was  done  largely  with  a  view  to  discover  the  influence  of 
environment  upon  mental  growth  and  it  was  actually  found  that 
the  city  children  not  only  differed  widely  from  those  of  the 
smaller  towns  and'country  villages,  but  also  that  children  living 
in  different  wards  of  the  same  city  possessed  quite  a  different 
stock  of  ideas,  due  of  course  chiefly  to  environment.  For  a  long 
time  previous  to  this  it  was  observed  that  country  children  who 
entered  the  city  schools  behind  the  children  of  the  same  age, 
readily  caught  up  with  them.  This  was  found  to  be  due  chiefly 
to  the  fact  that  the  methods  of  primary  instruction  were  better 
adapted  to  country  than  to  city  children.  It  was  found  that  a 
large  mass  of  children  actually  go  through  the  world  from  day 
to  day  without  observing  the  most  conspicuous  objects,  such  as 
important  monuments,  public  squares,  gardens  and  parks  near 
their  homes  and  schoolhouse.  When  asked  what  mountain 
(Berg)  they  had  ever  seen,  all  the  girls  in  an  upper  grammar  grade 
said  "Pfeffenberg,"  the  name  of  a  beer  hall  near  by.  Everyone 
thought  of  a  "  Berg7'  as  a  place  of  amusement  and  not  as  a  nat- 
ural object.  What  vague  notions  their  geography  lessons  must 
have  brought  to  them.  Nearly  half  the  boys  and  more  than  half 
the  girls  on  entering  school  had  never  seen,  to  know  by  name,  any 
of  these  three  most  conspicuous  objects  in  Berlin :  Lustgarten, 
Unter  den  Linden,  the  Brandenburg  Gate.  Space  will  not  permit 

*  For  complete  report  see  Vorstellungskreis  der  Berliner  Kinder  beim  Eintritt  in 
die  Schuler  (Berlin  Stadtisches  Jahrbuch  1870,  pp.  59-77). 

L.P.-JS  (177) 


178  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  the  table  being  printed  here  in  detail — only  the  more  genera} 
results.  Thus,  for  example,  out  of  ten  thousand  children,  9,026 
had  an  idea  of  dwellings— what  they  are  and  for  what  used; 
7,435  of  this  number  were  familiar  with  the  significance  of  the 
concept  "two;"  but  only  5,853  (a  few  more  than  half)  knew 
what  "  fish  "  meant;  only  3,646  had  any  notion  of  the  meaning 
of  the  term  "forest ; "  the  "King's  Palace "  was  clear  to  2,886 ; 
2,078  understood  the  term  "lake,"  while  "river"  was  known  to 
but  1,122.  The  names  of  75  objects  were  given  in  the  inquiries 
made  of  each  pupil.  Of  three-fourths  of  these,  more  girls  are 
ignorant  than  boys,  and  those  who  had  not  been  in  Kinder- 
garten were  decidedly  more  ignorant  than  those  who  had.  The 
girls,  however,  clearly  excelled  in  the  following  concepts:  Name 
and  vocation  of  the  father,  the  thunder  shower,  rainbow,  hail, 
potato  field,  moon,  square,  circle,  oak,  dew  and  Botanical  Gar- 
den. Of  the  whole  group  of  children  (10,000)  the  sphere  was 
known  to  76%,  the  cube  to  69%,  the  square  to  54%,  the  circle  to 
49%,  the  triangle  to  41%.  It  was  found  that  girls  excelled  in  space 
concepts  and  boys  in  numbers.  Girls  excelled  in  ideas  of  family, 
house  and  thunder-storms;  children  inmates  of  houses  of  refuge 
and  reform  schools  had  more  ideas  than  children  coming  from 
homes;  while  those  from  the  Kindergarten  excelled  both  the 
other  groups  in  their  fund  of  information.  It  is  a  burning  shame 
that  the  child's  most  used  and  threadbare  question— a  veritable 
"chestnut "— "  What  is  that  ?  "  should  be  answered  less  frequently 
at  home  than  elsewhere. 

Dr.  Karl  Lange  insists,  and  not  without  reason,  that  a  child 
six  years  of  age  has  absolutely  learned  far  more  than  a  student 
learns  during  his  university  course.  « <  These  six  years  have  been 
full  of  advancement  like  unto  the  six  days  of  creation."  Lange 
himself  made  some  investigations  upon  the  subject  of  environ- 
ment as  influencing  mental  "capital."  The  subjoined  table  was 
based  upon  observations  of  500  children  in  the  city  schools 
of  Planen  and  300  children  in  the  country  schools.  The  fig- 
ures given  indicate  the  per  cent,  of  those  having  the  concept 
mentioned. 


THE  CONTENTS  OF  A  CHILD'S  MIND. 


179 


TABLE  SHOWING  IN  PER  CENTS  THE  NUMBER  OF  CHILDREN  OUT  OF  500 
THAT  POSSESS  THE  IDEA  HERE  MENTIONED. 


The  Concept  or  Idea. 

City 
Children. 

Country 
Children. 

1 

Seen  the  sun  rise  

18 

42 

2 
3 
4 
5 

Seen  the  sun  set  
Seen  the  moon  and  stars  
Seen  fish  swim  
Been  to  a  pond  

23 

84 
72 

51 

58 
82 
83 
86 

6 

Been  to  a  brook  or  river  

71 

82 

7 
8 

Been  to  a  high  hill  or  mountain  
Been  in  a  forest 

48 
63 

74 

86 

9 

Knows  an  oak 

18 

57 

10 
11 

Seen  a  corn  or  wheat  field  
Knows  that  bread  comes  from  grain  

64 

28 

92 
63 

12 

Seen  a  shoemaker  at  work 

79 

80 

13 

Seen  a  carpenter  at  work 

55 

62 

14 

Seen  a  mason  at  work 

86 

92 

15 

Been  in  a  church 

50 

49 

Only  43  per  cent  of  the  city  children  had  ever  been  to  any 
town  or  village.  Their  knowledge  of  colors  was  as  follows,  be- 
ginning with  those  best  and  ending  with  those  least  known : 
black,  white,  red,  green,  blue,  yellow.  The  ignorance  of  city  chil- 
dren shows  the  practical  utility  of  frequent  school  excursions. 

It  is  interesting  to  know  that  in  Germany  it  is  more  common 
than  in  our  country  to  teach  school  geography  by  beginning  with 
the  schoolhouse  and  yard,  the  streets  of  the  city,  and  then  gradu- 
ally widen  out  into  the  world.  Holiday  walks  conducted  by  teach- 
ers for  educational  purposes  are  also  more  common,  we  are  sorry 
to  admit,  than  here  in  America. 

Of  much  more  value  than  this  work  of  investigation  done  in 
Berlin  are  the  painstaking  endeavors  undertaken  in  this  country 
by  that  leader  of  educational  thought  and  action,  President  G. 
Stanley  Hall,  of  Clark  University.  The  work  was  done  in  Boston 
in  1880  with  the  assistance  of  Mrs.  Quincey  Shaw  and  Miss  Pin- 
gree,  aided  by  four  teachers.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  this  work 
was  carried  out  with  the  greatest  care  and  thoroughness.* 

*  For  this  interesting  report  in  detail  see  Article  III,  in  "  Pedagogical  Seminary," 
June,  1891,  edited  by  G.  Stanley  Hall,  of  which  our  account  is  a  r6sum6. 


180 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


The  following  table  was  based  on  observations  made  upon  two 
hundred  Boston  children  shortly  after  entering  school  in  the  fall. 
The  endeavor  was  made  to  select  pupils  of  average  capacity  — 
neither  the  prodigy  nor  the  dullard — the  child  of  average  intelli- 
gence who  came  from  homes  not  representing  either  of  the  ex- 
tremes of  culture  or  ignorance. 

In  1883  Supt.  J.  M.  Greenwood,  of  the  Kansas  City  Schools, 
tested  678  children  of  the  lowest  primary  grade,  of  whom  47 
were  colored,  with  some  of  the  same  questions  used  by  Dr.  Hall 
in  his  Boston  tests.  It  should  be  observed  that  the  tests  on  the 
Kansas  City  children  were  made  in  March,  April  and  May,  or 
after  seven  months  of  school  life. 

The  comparisons  that  may  be  made  between  the  school  chil- 
dren of  these  two  American  cities,  with  respect  to  their  "  stock  of 
ideas  "—their  fund  of  knowledge— on  entering  school,  are  intensely 
interesting.  An  actual  basis  is  here  supplied  for  our  discussions 
with  reference  to  the  influence  of  environment  upon  children, 
especially  in  their  earlier  days.  The  Kansas  City  children  have, 
on  the  whole,  more  active  observing  powers  than  do  the  Boston 
children. 


Name  of  the  Object  of  Conception. 

Per  Cent,  of  Children 
Ignorant  of  it. 

In 
Boston. 

In  Kansas  City. 

White. 

Colored. 

Beehive 

80 
77 
72.5 
65.5 
63 
62 
60.5 
57.5 
54 
52 
50 
47.5 
33.5 

59.4 
47.3 

21^5 

15 

3o"e 

B.& 

7.27 
2.7 
1.7 
.5 

66 
59 

19!i 
4.2 

i6!<5 

'4!a 

Crow                                 

Bluebird                        :              

Ant                      

Squirrel  

Snail               

Robin.          .      .         

Sparrow  

Sheep 

Bee 

Froe 

Pig            

Chicken           

THE  CONTENTS  OF  A  CHILD'S  MIND. 


181 


Name  of  the  Object  of  Conception. 

Per  Cent,  of  Children 
Ignorant  of  it. 

In 
Boston. 

In  Kansas  City. 

White. 

Colored. 

TVorm                      .             .  .       .         

22 
20.5 
18.5 
92.5 
91.5 
87 
87 
83 
81.5 
78.5 
74 
71.5 
67.5 
66 
65.5 
64 
63 
61 
61 
55.5 
54 
53 
90.5 
81 
80 
70.5 
65.5 
52.5 
45 
36 
25 
21.5 
18 
15 
13.5 
7 
6 
78 
75.5 
73 
65 
56.5 
53.5 
35 

.5 
.5 
5.2 

23.4 
52.4 
62.2 
65.6 
31.2 
30.7 
26.5 

13^6 
26 
18.5 
3 
14.1 
14 
14 
2.9 
1.5 
1 
.5 
.5 
1.1 
1.6 
27.2 
39.1 
31.8 
13.6 
10.3 
16.6 
19.5 
7.3 

66" 
89.8 
58.6 
87.2 
80.8 
42.5 
1.1 

6.4 
44.6 
18.1 

'4.2 
4.2 

8.5 

10.2 

45.'9 

70.2 
56.1 
18.1 
2.1 

Butterfly                     

Cow                         .                  

Growing  Wheat.              

Elm  Tree                     

Oak  Tree 

Pine             .                     

Maple              .         

Growing  Moss                  

Growing  Strawberries  

Growing  Clover  

Growing  Beans 

Growing  Blueberries..       

Growing  Blackberries 

Growing  Corn  

Chestnut  Tree       

Planted  a  seed      

Peaches  on  a  tree 

Growing  Potatoes 

Growing  Buttercups  
Growing  Rose 

Growing  Grapes 

Where  are  the  child's  ribs? 

Where  are  the  child's  lungs? 

Where  is  the  child's  heart?. 

Where  is  the  child's  wrist? 

Where  are  the  child's  ankles? 

Where  is  the  child's  waist?  . 

Where  are  the  child's  hips? 

Where  are  the  child's  knuckles? 

Where  are  the  child's  elbows?  
Knows  right  and  left  hand         .      .    . 

Knows  cheek         

Knows  forehead                       

Knows  throat        

Knows  knee  

Knows  stomach  

Pew  

What  season  it  is     

Seen  hail 

Seen  rainbow 

Seen  sun  rise 

Seen  sun  set 

Seen  clouds 

182 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


Name  of  the  Object  of  Conception. 

Per  Cent,  of  Children 
Ignorant  of  it. 

In 
Boston. 

In  Kansas  City. 

White. 

Colored. 

Seen  stars         

14 
7 
87.5 
55.5 
53.5 
48       . 
40 
28 
15 
92 
56 
35 
28.5 
17 
8 
68 
65 
64.5 
62 
61 
44.5 
25 
12 
15 
14 
13.5 
9 
93.4 
91.5 
90 
89 
88 
81 
70 
69 
67.5 
64.5 
58 
55 
50.5 
48 
47.5 
40 
39 

3 

26 

30'l 
20.8 
13.9 
7.3  • 
5 
10.1 
8.7 
18.4 

50^8 

35^7 
34.7 

33^i 

46 
55 

ISA 
23.6 
19.3 
6.7 
8.3 
23.4 

53 

49^7 
36.1 
8.5 
15 
10:6 
2.1 

53" 

72'.3- 

15" 
57.4 

53 
47 
44 

i2!7 
6.4 

127 

Seen  moon                                

Conception  of  an  island.  

Conception  of  a  beach        

Conception  of  woods  

Conception  of  pond                            .... 

Conception  of  hill                              

Conception  of  brook 

Conception  of  triangle                 .       .... 

Conception  of  square          

Conception  of  circle       

The  number  five 

The  number  four 

The  number  three                        '         •"•  •  • 

Seen  watchmaker  at  work.          

Seen  file                                            

Seen  plow                           .     •       

Seen  spade                             

Seen  hoe                  

Seen  bricklayer  at  work  

Seen  shoemaker 

Seen  axe            

Knows  green  by  name 

Knows  blue  by  name                         

Knows  yellow  by  name.          .  .         

Knows  red  by  name                            

That  leathern  things  come  from  animals 
Maxim  or  proverb                             

Origin  of  cotton  things  
\Vhat  flour  is  made  of 

Ability  to  knit 

"What  bricks  are  made  of      

Shape  of  the  world                         

Origin  of  woolen  things      

Never  attended  kindergarten  

Never  been  in  bathing  

Can  tell  no  rudiment  of  a  story 

Not  know  wooden  things  are  from  trees. 
Origin  of  butter          .             

Origin  of  meat  (from  animals)  
Cannot  sew         .       .  .           

Cannot  strike  a  given  musical  tone  
Cannot  beat  time  regularly              

THE  CONTENTS  OF  A  CHILD'S  MIND. 


183 


Name  of  the  Object  of  Conception. 

Per  Cent,  of  Children 
Ignorant  of  it. 

In 
Boston. 

In  Kansas  City. 

White. 

Colored. 

Have  never  saved  pennies  at  home  
Never  been  in  country 

36 
35.5 
28 
20.5 

8.2 
13.1 
20 
4 

12.7 
19 
42.5 

Can  repeat  no  verse 

Source  of  milk 

Name  of  the  Object  of 
Conception. 

Per  Cent, 
of  Ignor- 
ance in 
150  Girls. 

Per  Cent, 
of  Ignor- 
ance in 
150  Boys. 

Per  Cent, 
of  Ignor- 
ance in 
50  Foreign 
Children. 

Per  Cent, 
of  Ignor- 
ance in  50 
American 
Children. 

Per  Cent, 
of  Ignor- 
ance in 
64  Kinder- 
garten 
Children. 

Beehive 

81 

75 

86 

70 

61 

Ant 

59 

60 

74 

38 

26 

Squirrel.  .  
Snail 

69 
69 

50 
73 

66 
92 

42 

72 

43 

62 

Robin 

69 

44 

64 

36 

29 

Sheep 

67 

47 

62 

40 

40 

Bee 

46 

32 

52 

32 

26 

Froff 

53 

38 

54 

35 

35 

Pig 

45 

27 

38 

26 

22 

Chicken                 .... 

35 

21 

32 

16 

22 

Worm 

21 

17 

26 

16 

9 

Butterfly 

14 

16 

26 

8 

9 

Hen            

15 

14 

18 

2 

14 

Cow.     . 

18 

12 

20 

6 

10 

Growing  clover  

59 

68 

84 

42 

29 

Growing  corn  

58 

50 

60 

68 

32 

Growing  potatoes..  . 
Growing  buttercups. 
Growing  rose  
Growing  dandelion  .  . 
Growing  apples  
Ribs  

55 
50 

48 
44 
16 

88 

54 
51 
48 
42 
16 
92 

62 
66 
60 
62 

18 
98 

44 
40 
42 
34 
12 
82 

34 
31 
33 
31 
5 
68 

Ankles  
Waist  

58 
53 

52 
52 

62 
64 

40 
32 

38 
36 

Hips  
Knuckles  
Elbow 

50 

27 
19 

47 

27 
32 

72 
34 
36 

31 

12 
16 

24 
23 

12 

Right  from  left  hand 
Wrist  

20 
21 

8 
34 

14 
44 

20 
9 

4 
19 

Cheek. 

10 

12 

14 

14 

4 

184 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


Name  of  the  Object  of 
Conceptio^  . 

Per  Cent, 
of  Ignor- 
ance in 
150  Girls. 

PerCent. 
of  Ignor- 
ance in 
150  Boys. 

Per  Cent, 
of  Ignor- 
ance in 
50  Foreign 
Children. 

PerCent. 
of  Ignor- 
ance in  50 
American 
Children. 

PerCent. 
of  Ignor- 
ance in 
64  Kinder- 
garten 
Children. 

Forehead      ... 

10 

11 

12 

10 

7 

Throat  

10 

18 

14 

16 

14 

Knee  

4 

5 

2 

10 

2 

Dew  
What  season  it  is.  ... 
Hail                        

64 
59 
75 

63 
50 

61 

92 

68 
84 

52 

48 
52 

57 
41 
53 

Rainbow         

59 

61 

70 

38 

38 

Sunrise.                .    .    . 

71 

53 

70 

36 

53 

Sunset      .  .         

47 

49 

52 

32 

29 

Star 

15 

10 

12 

4 

7 

Island  

74    - 

78 

84 

64 

55 

Beach  

82 

49 

60 

34 

32 

Woods  

46 

36 

46 

32 

27 

River 

38 

44 

62 

12 

13 

Pond  

31 

34 

42 

24 

28 

Hill 

23 

22 

30 

12 

]9 

The  number  five.  .  .  . 
The  number  four.  .  .  . 
The  number  three.  .  . 

26 
15 

7 

16 
10 
6 

22 

16 
12 

24 
14 

8 

12 

7 
0 

The  tables  speak  for  themselves  and  are  submitted  here  with- 
out comment.  Especially  noticeable  is  the  fact  that  Kindergar- 
ten children  without  regard  to  nationality  have  the  advantage 
over  all  others.  Most  of  these  children  came  from  a  charity  Kinder- 
garten, so  that  superior  intelligence  and  home  environments  can 
hardly  be  assumed.  Thirty  teachers  were  questioned  as  to  the  dif- 
ference between  children  from  Kindergartens  and  other  children. 
Four  said  no  difference  was  observable,  while  all  the  rest  thought 
them  better  fitted  for  work,  noting  especially  their  better  com- 
mand of  language,  superior  skill  with  hand  and  slate,  excelling 
in  quickness,  power  of  observation,  number  work,  singing,  neat- 
ness, politeness,  freedom  from  excessive  bashfulness  and,  best  of 
all,  love  of  work.  Some  thought  them  more  restless  and  talka- 
tive, and  one  complained  because  "  children  from  the  kindergar- 
tens always  want  to  know  the  reason  why  of  everything." 

The  high  rate  of  ignorance  exhibited  in  the  table  is  surprising 


THE  CONTENTS  OF  A  CHILD'S  MIND.  185 

to  most  readers  of  the  report.  But  is  it  not  because  we  take  too 
much  for  granted  with  reference  to  the  knowledge  possessed  by 
the  children  in  whom  we  are  more  especially  interested  and  with 
whom  we  come  in  contact?  I  was  rebuked  and  made  ashamed  of 
my  own  neglect  when  I  came  to  test  my  little  five  year  old  girl 
with  the  same  conceptions  as  those  employed  in  the  tests  on  the 
Boston  children.  Of  course,  it  would  be  unnatural  for  me  to  say 
anything  else  than  that  she  is  above  the  average  child  in  intelli- 
gence. The  painful  surprise  came,  when,  after  she  had  answered 
nearly  every  question  of  the  above  table  correctly,  the  inquiry 
was  made  as  to  the  origin  of  butter.  The  answer  she  gave  was— 
"From  buttercups."  Some  of  the  Boston  children  stated  that 
« « skeins  and  spools  of  thread  grow  on  a  sheep's  back  or  on  bushes, 
stockings  on  trees,  butter  comes  from  buttercups,  flour  is  made 
from  beans  (quite  excusable  in  a  Boston  child),  oats  grow  on 
oak  trees,  bread  is  swelled  yeast,  meat  is  dug  from  the  ground, 
and  potatoes  picked  from  trees.  Cheese  is  squeezed  from  butter, 
the  cow  says  'bow-wow,'  the  pig  purrs,  bricks  are  the  same  as 
stones,  etc." 

We  cannot  do  better  than  to  quote  at  least  two  of  the  conclu- 
sions reached  by  Dr.  Hall  to  the  effect  that : 

1.  There  is  next  to  nothing  of  real  educational  value,  the 
knowledge  of  which  it  is  safe  to  assume  at  the  beginning  of 
school  life.    Hence,  the  need  of  objects  and  the  danger  of  books, 
word  cramming  and  rote  learning. 

2.  The  best  preparation  parents  can  give  children  for  real 
valuable  school  learning  is  to  make  them  acquainted  with  natu- 
ral objects,  especially  with  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  country, 
and  send  them  to  good,  common-sense  kindergartens.    "A  coun- 
try barn  or  a  forest  is  a  great  school  at  that  age." 

In  a  recent  number  of  the  "Outlook"  the  following  pertinent 
paragraph  appears  under  the  caption,  "A  Public  Benefactor:  " 

"A  teacher  in  one  of  the  public  schools  in  Brooklyn  has  offered 
a  prize  for  the  best  collection  of  leaves  made  by  her  pupils.  It  is 
said  this  has  created  an  intense  interest  in  botany  in  her  class, 
which  shows  itself  in  very  much  better  text-book  work.  Squeers 


186  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

forestalled  education  by  a  great  many  years  when  he  taught  the 
boy  to  spell  "horse,"  and  then  go  and  curry  one.  One  of  the 
pathetic  things  about  our  system  of  education,  when  the  teacher 
is  a  teacher  from  necessity  and  not  from  choice,  is  that  the  pupil 
literally  goes  through  the  world  having  eyes  and  seeing  not,  and 
having  ears  and  hearing  not,  because  the  power  that  is  within 
himself  is  not  developed.  He  is  too  often  made  a  receptacle  for 
words— a  human  phonograph,  who  is  expected  to  give  back  just 
what  has  been  put  in,  in  its  original  form,  not  changed  by  the  in- 
dividual use  he  has  made  of  those  words.  The  teacher  in  Brook- 
lyn may  never  be  known  by  name,  but  she  certainly  will  leave  her 
impress  on  the  plastic  germ  of  immortality  intrusted  to  her  care. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  her  boys  will  not  spend  their  summer  vaca- 
tions playing  billiards,  nor  her  girls  embroidering  purple  dogs 
against  a  green  sky  when  they  reach  maturity.  The  woods  will 
offer  them  more  interesting  objects  than  Broadway." 

That  children  at  the  age  of  six  have  ideas  of  right  and  wrong 
was  certainly  evinced  by  the  Boston  tests.  Each  child  was  asked 
to  name  three  things  wrong  and  three  things  of  which  right  can  be 
predicated.  In  not  a  single  case  were  the  two  confused  or  inter- 
changed. Boys  say  it  is  wrong  to  steal,  fight,  break  windows,  get 
drunk,  "  sass  "  or  "  cuss,"  while  girls  intimate  it  is  wrong  not  to 
comb  their  hair,  to  get  butter  on  their  dress,  to  climb  trees,  to  un- 
fold the  hands,  or  be  "  Tom  boys."  Wrong  things  are  more  fre- 
quently specified  than  right,  showing  among  other  things  the  sad 
fact  that  children  are  more  often  told  what  they  must  not  do 
than  they  are  informed  as  to  what  they  may  do. 

Another  extended  inquiry  has  been  made  since  the  attempts  in 
Boston.  It  was  that  of  Dr.  Hartmann  undertaken  in  Annaberg, 
Germany,  in  order  to  gain  some  light  upon  the  question  as  to 
what  is  the  best  natural  basis  of  primary  school  instruction. 
These  tests  extended  over  a  period  of  five  years  on  as  many 
groups  of  children  and  the  vigor  and  enthusiasm  with  which  they 
were  prosecuted  caused  similar  tests  to  be  undertaken  in  other 
German  cities.  The  course  since  mapped  out  at  Annaberg  for  the 
first  two  years  of  school  life  finds  its  basis  in  the  results  of  these 


THE  CONTENTS  OF  A  CHILD'S  MIND.  187 

experiments.  So  valuable  have  these  tests  been  found  to  be,  that 
they  are  now  undertaken  each  year  in  various  cities  whose  eyes 
are  open  to  the  best  development  of  the  children's  mental  life. 
One  Normal  School,  that  of  Jena,  begins  each  year  with  similar 
investigations  into  the  children's  sphere  of  thought.  Who  can 
predict  what  delightful  and  beneficial  changes  would  be  wrought 
in  the  prevailing  methods  if  tests  were  made  in  at  least  100  rep- 
resentative localities  of  our  country.  What  a  comment  theresults 
would  be!  How  quick  we  would  be  to  insist  that  methods  of 
teaching  be  adopted  which  would  be  better  suited  to  the  average 
child  mind  and  increase  his  stock  of  ideas,  train  his  senses  and 
make  more  possible  his  final  emancipation  from  the  thraldom  of 
ignorance,  so  that  in  him  there  could  be  realized  the  ideal,  com- 
plete, well-rounded  development  which  should  be  the  lot  of  every 
individual. 


LESSON  XVI. 

THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE. 

THUS  far  we  have  considered  only  the  thought  processes  of  the 
normal  person  in  his  wakeful  moments.  In  several  of  the  previ- 
ous chapters,  in  which  the  various  sensations  have  been  the  sub- 
ject of  discussion,  little  or  nothing  has  been  said  of  the  illusions 
of  sense.  By  illusion,  in  the  broadest  sense  of  the  word,  is  meant 
mental  deception.  In  its  more  restricted  meaning,  it  indicates  a 
mistaken  subjective  or  mental  interpretation  of  an  objective  im- 
pression, as  when  the  charred,  blackened  stump  at  the  roadside, 
is  taken  for  a  crouching  highwayman,  or  the  perfectly  square, 
plane  figure  appears  higher  than  it  is  wide,  or  the  lady's  hand 
appears  smaller  clothed  in  a  black  than  in  a  white  glove. 

Illusions  must  be  distinguished  from  hallucinations.  In  the 
illusion,  there  is  actually  present  some  objective  stimulus  which 
is  somehow  misinterpreted,  in  consequence  of  which,  we  have  a 
wrong  picture  of  the  object  as  it  actually  exists.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  hallucination  there  is  no  objective  stimulus  at  all. 
This  difference  is  made  more  clear  and  definite  by  illustration. 
I  am  fishing.  The  trolling  line  is  out,  the  spoon  is  twirling,  my 
thumb  is  on  the  reel  seat  with  fingers  ready  to  "reel  in" — all  is 
expectancy.  Suddenly,  I  feel  a  jerk  at  the  line,  the  flexible  tip  of 
the  rod  is  bending,  I  cry  out  exultingly  "a  strike."  I  reel  in  a 
few  feet  and  reluctantly  am  compelled  to  admit  that  I  was  de- 
ceived by  a  bunch  of  weeds  getting  on  my  hook— an  illusion  of 
sense.  The  jerk  at  the  line  was  an  actual  objective  stimulus,  but 
was  misinterpreted  to  be  the  bite  of  a  muskellunge  instead  of  a 
bunch  of  weed.  This  is  a  case  of  sensory  illusion.  The  voices  one 
hears  in  his  troubled  dreams,  the  monsters  one  sees  in  a  terrible 
nightmare,  the  dagger  of  Lady  Macbeth—  ("  Is  this  a  dagger  I 
(188) 


THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE.  189 

see  before  me?  ")— all  these,  in  that  they  are  products  of  fancy's 
creating  power  and  not  based  upon  real  objectively  existing 
voices  and  shapes,  are  hallucinations.  Thus,  it  is  said,  the  poet, 
Goethe,  was  able,  when  his  eyes  were  closed  and  his  head  inclined, 
to  see  a  flower,  out  of  which  other  new  flowers  kept  growing  for 
as  long  a  time  as  he  liked. 

Some  writers  insist  that  the  treatment  of  the  interesting  phe- 
nomena grouped  under  the  class-names,  hallucinations  and  illu- 
sions, lie  outside  of  the  province  of  the  psychologist.  But  you 
will  recall  that  at  the  outset,  in  the  very  first  pages  of  this  book, 
it  was  claimed  that  in  order  to  know  what  mind  is  we  must  know 
what  it  does.  The  real  work  of  the  student  of  Psychology  is  to 
discover  the  nature  of  mind  as  it  unfolds  and  reveals  itself  in  the 
activities  of  daily  life.  The  study  of  illusions  throws  much  light 
on  the  subject  of  sense  perception,  showing  conclusively  that  the 
mental  element  in  every  perceptive  act,  is  an  important  and  es- 
sential factor.  No  fair-minded  student  will  close  his  eyes  to  a 
single  fact  that  will  shed  the  least  ray  of  light  upon  the  nature  of 
the  subject  he  is  investigating.  In  the  present  volume  we  are 
seeking  to  discover  the  nature  of  mind.  We  can  do  this  only 
when  we  patiently  investigate  into  all  the  activities  through 
which  mind  manifests  its  nature.  Illusions  of  sense  are  especially 
characteristic  of  the  child  mind  in  the  imaginative  period.  Of  all 
persons,  the  teacher  and  parent  ought  be  acquainted  with  the  fact 
that  all  individuals  do  not  see  the  same  object  in  the  same  way. 
Though  the  same  object  may  make  the  same  image  on  the  retina, 
this  objective  stimulus  will  be  differently  interpreted  by  each 
Individual  whose  sensorium  is  affected.  The  perceptions  of  no 
two  individuals  are  exactly  alike,  be  they  induced  by  the  same 
visual,  auditory,  touch,  smell  or  taste  impressions.  Two  travel- 
ers, both  thoroughly  honest,  will  give  quite  different  accounts  of 
the  same  object,  viewed  abroad,  because  each  perceived  this  ob- 
ject differently.  The  beautiful  forest  with  its  gigantic  trees,  dense 
shade  and  graceful  trunks  will  make  three  distinct  impressions 
on  as  many  persons.  The  lumberman  will  enter  the  forest  with  his 
cool,  commercial  eye,  calculating  the  number  of  logs  that  could  be 


190  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

cut  from  this  oak  or  that  hemlock,  the  number  of  "board-feet" 
that  each  will  yield,  and  so  on;  the  tired,  hot,  dusty  traveler  will 
appreciate  most  of  all  its  delightful  shade,  the  soft  mossy  turf 
that  makes  such  a  restful  couch  upon  which  to  recline— little  cares 
he  whether  the  tree  over  his  body  is  a  beech,  pine  or  sycamore; 
on  the  other  hand,  the  artist,  with  his  sketching  paper,  looks  at 
the  trees  with  respect  to  the  blending  of  color,  their  outline  and 
general  aesthetic  effect.  Do  you  not  readily  see  that  these  three 
men  will  carry  away  in  their  minds,  very  different  pictures  of  this 
same  forest  ?  You  are,  no  doubt,  familiar  with  the  old  time  jingle 
which  relates  the  story  of 

THE  BLIND  MEN  AND  THE  ELEPHANT. 

It  was  six  men  of  Indostan 

To  learning  much  inclined, 
Who  went  to  see  the  elephant 

(Though  all  of  them  were  blind), 
That  each  by  observation 

Might  satisfy  his  mind. 

The  first  approached  the  elephant, 

And,  happening  to  fall 
Against  his  broad  and  sturdy  side, 

At  once  began  to  bawl : 
"God  bless  me!  but  the  elephant 

Is  very  like  a  wall!" 

The  second,  feeling  of  the  tusk, 

Cried:  "Ho!  what  have  we  here, 
So  very  round  and  smooth,  and  sharp? 

To  me  'tis  very  clear, 
This  wonder  of  an  elephant 

Is  very  like  a  spear!" 

The  third  approached  the  animal, 

And,  happening  to  take 
The  squirming  trunk  within  his  hands, 

Thus  boldly  up  he  spake: 
"I  see,"  quoth  he,  "the  elephant 

Is  very  like  a  snake!" 


THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE.  191 

The  fourth  reached  out  his  eager  hand, 

And  felt  about  the  knee. 
"What  most  this  wondrous  beast  is  like, 

Is  very  plain,"  quoth  he; 
"Tis  clear  enough  the  elephant 

Is  very  like  a  tree!" 

The  fifth,  who  chanced  to  touch  the  ear, 

Said:  "E'en  the  blindest  man 
Can  tell  what  this  resembles  most; 

Deny  the  fact  who  can, 
This  marvel  of  an  elephant 

Is  very  like  a  fan ! " 

The  sixth  no  sooner  had  begun 

About  the  beast  to  grope, 
Than,  seizing  on  the  swinging  tail 

That  fell  within  his  scope, 
"I  see,"  quoth  he,  "the  elephant 
Is  very  like  a  rope!" 

And  so  these  men  of  Indostan 

Disputed  loud  and  long, 
Each  in  his  own  opinion 

Exceeding  stiff  and  strong, 
Though  each  was  partly  in  the  right, 

And  all  were  in  the  wrong! 

So  it  is  with  children  in  our  schools— with  their  organs  of  sense 
differently  developed,  they  each  look  at  a  new  object  from  a  dif- 
ferent point  of  view.  Teachers  and  parents  are  apt  to  forget  this 
and  censure  children  accordingly.  This  brings  out  the  other  fact 
that  illusions  are  not  all  uniform.  The  illusion  that  occurs  to 
one  person  may  not  be  so  perceived  by  another.  The  most  im- 
portant fact  to  remember  is  that  illusions  do  occur,  and  that 
teachers  and  others  should  accordingly  make  allowance  for 
them.  One  of  the  most  humiliating  experiences  that  I  have  to 
remember,  one  which  harrows  my  soul  to  this  day,  though  it 
occurred  years  agone,  was  due  to  a  quite  common  optical  illu- 
sion. When  less  than  sixteen  years  of  age,  I  was  given  charge 


192  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  alarge,  ungraded,  district  school.  One  of  the  twenty-five  classes 
I  was  compelled  to  teach  each  day  was  Plane  Geometry.  I  had 
always  noticed  that  the  squares  drawn  by  the  pupils  looked 
higher  than  they  did  wide.  This  seemed  to  occur  so  regularly 
that  I  cautioned  the  pupils  that  they  measure  accurately  the  lines, 
especially  in  drawing  square  figures.  The  next  day  the  squares 
drawn  by  the  same  pupils  still  looked  higher  than  wide.  This  fact 
so  nettled  me  that  I  "lectured"  the  class  severely  because  they 
did  not  draw  their  squares  square.  Fate  seemed  to  decree  that  I 

should  learn  a  lesson  then 
and  there,  for  I  was  sudden- 
ly seized  with  the  notion  to 
measure  the  lines  before  their 
very  eyes  that  they  might  see 
how  serious  their  mistakes 
actually  were  —  when  lo,  I 
discovered  that  I,  myself, 
was  at  fault  — the  squares 
were  perfectly  drawn — and  I 
had  to  back  down  as  grace- 
fully  as  I  knew  how.  This 


FIGUEE  24.  experience  is  related  on  the 

basis  of  the  old  trite  saying  that  "  an  honest  confession  is  good 
for  the  soul." 

When  comparing  magnitudes  in  the  upper  part  of  the  field  of 
vision  with  those  in  the  lower,  one  overestimates  the  former. 
The  upper  and  lower  half  of  an  "  S,"  "B,"  "X"  or  a  figure  "8" 
appear  of  nearly  the  same  size,  but  when  they  are  inverted 
("S»"  "9>"  "x"'an<*  "fi")»  *ke  difference  in  the  size  of  the  two 
halves  is  exaggerated. 

A  vertical  line  appears  longer  than  a  horizontal  line  of  the  same 
length— at  least  to  a  large  majority  of  persons.  (See  Fig.  24.) 
This  is  because  greater  effort  of  the  eye  is  called  for  in  order  to 
see  a  vertical  line  than  is  required  to  see  one  that  is  horizontal. 
The  vertical  line  seems  longer  for  almost  the  same  reason  that  a 


THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE. 


193 


mile  up  hill  seems  longer  to  the  traveler  than  a  mile  over  a  level 
stretch  of  country  —  it  takes  more  effort  to  get  over  the  ground. 
A  square  whose  height  is  diminished  by  at  least  one  fortieth  seems 


V 


V    V 


V    V 


/   /   s 


~s 


s 


v  v 


V 


v 


N 


\    \    \     X 

FIGURE  25. 


N    N    N 


perfectly  square  to  the  eye  of  so  good  and  well-trained  an  observer 
as  Helmholtz. 

Illusions  are  of  frequent  occurrence—  all  persons  are  subject  to 
them,  and  they  appear  in  connection  with  everyone  of  the  senses. 
The  optical  illusions  are  probably  the  most  common  and  will  first 


FIGURE  26. 

receive  our  attention.  In  Fig.  25  (first  described  by  Zollner, 
and  known  as  Zollner's  lines)  the  four,  long,  main  (horizontal) 
lines  are  actually  parallel,  though  they  by  no  means  appear  so. 
They  seem  to  be  very  far  from  parallel,  each  ad  joining  pair  of  linee 
seems  to  diverge  at  one  end  and  converge  at  the  other.  In  Fig. 

L.  P.— 13 


194 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


26  we  have  practically  the  same  illusion  in  another  form  ;  also  in 
Fig.  27. 

In  Fig.  28  and  Fig.  29  we  have  the  optical  illusion  known 
commonly  ag  the  illusion  of  discontinuity. 


FIGURE  27. 


In  A  of  Fig.  28,  a  appears  continuous  with  c,  but  is  really  so 
with  b.  This  is  especially  emphasized  in  B  (Fig.  28),  in  which  the 
actually  continuous  line  ab  appears  to  be  deflected  once  in  one 


V 


B 


\ 


FIGURE  28. 


direction  and  again  in  the  opposite  direction.  When  two  unequal 
angles  together  make  180°,  the  acute  angle  appears  relatively 
larger  and  the  obtuse  angle  relatively  smaller  than  should  be  the 


THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE. 


195 


case.  Thus  in  A  of  Fig.  29,  c  seems  continuous  with  a,  while  b  is 
really  so ;  this  is  because  the  lower  obtuse  angle  is  made  smaller 
than  it  really  is. 

We  are  also  greatly  deceived  by  the  apparent  length  of  lines. 


FIGURE  29. 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  fact  that  a  vertical  line  appears 
longer  than  a  horizontal  line  of  the  same  length.  This  has  beon 
shown  in  Fig.  24.  In  Fig.  30  the  horizontal  portions  of  I,  II, 


\ 


III 


IV 


FIGURE  30. 


Ill  and  IV  are  all  the  same  length.    The  greater  the  angle  at  the 
extremity, the  greater  is  the  apparent  length  of  the  line. 

The  same  influence  seems  to  obtain  with  reference  to  the  pair 


196  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  horizontal  lines  a  and  b  in  Fig.  31,  and  the  pair  of  horizontal 
N  A  f 


FIGURE  31. 

lines  x  andj  in  Fig.  32,  which  are  exactly  the  same  in  length, 
though  they  by  no  means  appear  so. 


FIGURE  32. 

The  presence  of  the  lines  themselves  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
optical  illusion,  as  is  shown  in  the  cut  (Fig.  33)  where  the  lines 


A 


A 


FIGURE  33. 

are  omitted.    This  seems  to  show  conclusively  that  the  illusion  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  we  overestimate  small  angles  and  underesti- 


FIGURE  34. 

mate  large  ones.     That  angular  inclination  is  the  decisive  factor 
is  shown  best  of  all  in   Fig.  34,  where  the  continuous  line  is 


777 K  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE. 


197 


bisected,  exactly  at  the  middle  point,  though  the  two  parts    do 
not  appear  equal. 


FIGURE  35. 

With  most  persons  the  two  areas  in  Fig.  35  would  be  judged 
unequal.  To  the  majority  of  persons  the  upper  figure  in  the  cut  ap- 


pears larger  than  the  lower  one.  We  judge  the  two  areas  by  means 
of  their  juxtaposed  lines.  The  upper  figure  seems  the  larger  because 


198 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


its  longer  side  (the  base  line,  AB)  is  brought  into  contrast  with 
the  shorter  side,  inn,  of  the  lower  figure.  It  is  a  well-known  fact 
that  a  square  resting  on  one  of  its  corners  is  apparently  larger 
than  an  equal  square  resting  on  one  of  its  sides, because  we  then 
contrast  the  side  of  the  one  with  the  diagonal  of  the  other 
square.  The  illusion  in  Fig.  36  rests  upon  the  same  underlying 

principle  as  that  represented 
in  Fig.  35,  the  lower  figure 
seeming  the  larger,  and  quite 
clearly  so. 

The  cut  (Fig.  37)  repre- 
sents a  gothic  arch  bisected 
at  one  side  by  a  straight  col- 
umn, the  apex  of  the  arch 
being  at  A.  On  looking  at 
the  two-  sides  of  the  arch 
it  will  seem  impossible  that 
both  can  be  of  the  same  de- 
gree of  curvature,  or  that 
the  lines  of  the  shorter  side, 
if  extended,  will  join  those  of 
the  longer  one.  It  can,  how- 
ever, be  very  easily  proved 
by  drawing  two  lines  with 
a  pencil  across  the  straight 
bisecting  lines,  when  the  arch 
will  at  once  appear  in  its 
proper  form,  although  until 
this  is  done  the  eye  refuses 
to  perceive  the  fact,  and  the  appearance  of  two  dissimilar  arches 
persists.  This  illusion  is  of  practical  importance  to  architects 
who  in  planning  buildings  with  arches, should  avoid  placing  col- 
umns in  such  a  position  that  the  arches  will  be  unsymmetrically 
divided  by  them. 

Drapers,  furnishers  and  decorators  in  making  the  ceiling  of  a 
room  appear  higher  or  lower,  or  the  room  itself  appear  larger  or 


FIGURE  37. — AN  ARCH  UNSYMMETRI- 
CALLY DIVIDED. 


THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE.  199 

smaller,  take  advantage  of  certain  optical  illusions.  Likewise 
the  dressmaker.  No  stoutly  built  woman  could  be  persuaded  to 
wear  a  striped  dress  so  made,  that  the  stripes  run  horizontally 
around  her  body.  Neither  will  she  wear  a  large  figured  plaid. 

"The  Proof  Header's  Illusion"  is  one  of  the  more  common 
forms  of  illusion  experienced.  Printers  will  read  common  words 
aright  when  spelled  wrong  simply  because  of  the  element  of  ex- 
pectancy. The  typographical  errors  occur  as  a  rule  in  con- 
nection with  common  words,  and  are  not  found  in  connection 
with  unfamiliar,  unusual  or  extraordinary  words.  The  familiar 
words  are  read  as  wholes  by  the  proof  reader,  while  the  unfa- 
miliar words  are  read  a  letter  at  a  time.  Professor  James  relates 
an  experience  which  is  very  pertinent  in  this  connection  :  "  I  re- 
member one  night  in  Boston,  whilst  waiting  for  a  'Mount  Au- 
burn' car  to  bring  me  to  Cambridge,  reading  most  distinctly  that 
name  upon  the  signboard  of  a  car  on  which  (as  I  afterwards 
learned)  ' North  Avenue'  was  painted.  The  illusion  was  so  vivid 
that  I  could  hardly  believe  my  eyes  had  deceived  me.  All  reading 
is  more  or  less  performed  in  this  way." 

Professor  Lazurus  tells  us  that  "practised  novel,  or  newspaper, 
readers  could  not  possibly  get  on  so  fast  if  they  had  to  see  accu- 
rately every  single  letter  of  each  word  in  order  to  perceive  the 
words.  More  than  half  of  the  words  come  out  of  their  mind, 
and  hardly  half  from  the  printed  page.  Were  this  not  so,  did  we 
perceive  each  letter  by  itself,  typographic  errors  in  well-known 
words  would  never  be  overlooked.  Children,  whose  ideas  are  not 
yet  ready  enough  to  perceive  words  at  a  glance,  read  them  wrong 
if  they  are  printed  wrong;  that  is,  right  according  to  the  print- 
ing. In  a  foreign  language,  although  it  may  be  printed  with  the 
same  letters ,  we  read  by  so  much  the  more  slowly  as  we  do  not 
understand  or  are  unable  promptly  to  perceive  the  words.  But 
we  notice  misprints  all  the  more  readily.  For  this  reason  Latin 
and  Greek,  and  still  better  Hebrew  works  are  more  correctly 
printed,  because  the  proofs  are  better  corrected  than  in  German 
works.  Of  two  friends  of  mine  one  knew  much  Hebrew,  the  other 
little,  the  latter,  however,  gave  instruction  in  Hebrew  in  a  Gym- 


200  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

nasium  [as  the  Germans  call  their  academic  schools],  and  when 
he  called  the  other  to  help  correct  his  pupils'  exercises,  it  turned 
out  that  he  could  find  out  all  sorts  of  little  errors  better  than 
his  friend,  because  thelatter's  perception  of  the  words  as  totals 
was  too  swift." 

This  tendency,  so  prevalent,  of  perceiving  optical  illusions  is 
also  made  use  of  in  every  spiritualistic  seance  where  the  "fake" 
medium  deludes  the  bereft  inquirer  into  believing  that  he  actually 
sees  the  spirit  of  his  departed  wife,  mother,  sister  or  child.  The 
mental  picture  he  has  of  his  loved  one,  the  yearning  to  catch 
just  one  glimpse  of  her  face  (in  which  the  "wish  is  father  to  the 
thought " ) ,  the  bewilderment  that  comes  with  the  semi-mysterious 
surroundings,  the  darkened  room  and  the  gauze  enveloped  figure, 
all  conspire  in  making  him  clothe  the  figure  that  appears  with 
the  form  of  face  and  quality  of  expression  that  his  own  loved  one 
possessed  during  her  natural  life.  In  other  words  he  sees  what 
he  so  much  desires  to  see.  For  something  of  the  same  reason 
criminal  courts  are  very  slow  to  take  at  face  value  the  testimony 
of  an  interested  party  as  to  the  identity  of  a  person  supposed  to 
have  committed  a  crime.  This  is  especially  true  when  the  wit- 
ness is  in  an  excited  condition  or  was,  at  least,  when  the  crime 
was  committed.  So  anxious  to  have  the  criminal  detected  and 
so  desirous  of  having  a  part  in  this  detection,  such  a  person  is 
liable  to  error  no  matter  how  positively  he  may  swear  or  affirm 
with  reference  to  the  identity  of  the  suspected  person  and  his  con- 
nection with  this  or  that  particular  crime.  When  the  writer  was 
a  boy  of  twelve  he  was  a  forced  spectator  at  a  negro  lynching. 
The  victim  of  the  mob's  fury  was  declared  guilty  of  crime  simply 
on  the  basis  of  his  being  identified  as  the  criminal  by  a  little  girl 
of  five  years  of  age,  who  was  at  the  time  in  a  highly  excited  con- 
dition. It  afterwards  transpired  that  the  man  was  entirely  in- 
nocent of  the  crime  for  which  he  was  executed. 

We  are  all  subject  to  certain  peculiar  illusions  of  movement. 
If  you  are  seated  in  a  twisted  swing  and  it  is  made  to  rotarte  and 
then  suddenly  stopped  you  have  a  sensation  of  movement  in  the 
opposite  direction.  At  a  railroad  station  when  seated  in  a  car 


THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSK  201 

expecting  the  train  to  start  it  is  difficult  to  tell,  when  we  see 
objects  move  past  the  car  windows,  whether  it  is  our  train  that 
moves  or  the  one  alongside  that  in  which  we  are  seated.  Sim- 
ilar illusions  are  noted  when  we  take  passage  in  an  elevator  or 
are  seated  in  the  cabin  of  a  ferry  boat.  ' 

In  discussing  the  sense  of  hearing  in  a  former  chapter,  your  at- 
tention was  called  to  the  fact  that  we  are  very  apt  to  misjudge 
the  direction  of  sound.  This  illusion  is  shown  very  clearly  in  the 
"Punch  and  Judy"  exhibitions,  so  common  a  few  years  ago  at 
county  fairs,  dime  museums  and  street  shows,  in  which  the  ven- 
triloquist talks  without  moving  his  lips,  and  at  the  same  time 
draws  our  attention  to  a  doll  or  two  whose  lips  he  moves  by  a 
little  spring.  We  at  once  locate  the  source  of  the  sound  within 
the  doll. 

You  have  no  doubt  been  present  at  a  play  where  an  actor  who 
is  entirely  ignorant  of  music  is  required  in  the  plot  to  play  on 
the  mandolin  or  banjo.  He  simply  goes  through  the  motions 
before  our  eyes,  while  some  one  behind  the  scenes  or  in  the  or- 
chestra actually  does  the  playing.  But  because  our  attention  is 
fixed  upon  the  actor,  it  is  almost  impossible  not  to  hear  the 
music  as  due  to  him  and  proceeding  from  that  precise  locality  of 
space  in  which  he  is  standing. 

The  illusions  of  touch  are  very  frequent.  They  consist  simply 
of  a  touch  stimulus  occurring  at  one  portion  of  the  body  being 
interpreted  as  arising  from  an  entirely  different  locality.  Besides 
the  mere  modification  or  confusion  with  reference  to  locality  of 
the  stimulus,  there  is  also  oftentimes  a  change  in  the  quantity 
and  quality  or  tone  of  the  touch  sensation.  If  some  one  touch 
you  at  any  given  point  on  the  skin  of  the  forearm  and  you  try 
to  indicate  the  same  identical  spot,  you  miss  it  by  considerable. 
I  remember  a  peculiar  case  of  translocation  of  touch  stimula- 
tion that  once  happened  in  my  own  experience.  There  is  nothing 
more  disagreeable  to  me  than  to  have  my  face  touched  with 
woolen  cloth  of  any  kind— a  piece  of  flannel  or  a  blanket.  Once 
while  watching  by  the  bedside  of  a  sick  friend  my  hand  uncon- 
sciously slipped  from  off  the  table  by  the  bed  and  touched  the 


202 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


woolen  blanket  which  formed  part  of  the  covering.  Immediately, 
I  felt  the  disagreeable  touch  of  the  blanket  on  the  left  side  of  my 
face  and  not  on  my  hand,  where  the  touch  actually  occurred. 

A  common  illusion  is  connected  with  the  movement  of  a  point 
or  object  on  the  skin.  Of  two  objects  moving  on  the  skin  at  the 
same  time  and  at  the  same  rate,  the  heavier  one  appears  to  move 
the  faster. 

If  two  points  kept  equidistant  from  each  other,  be  drawn  over 


FIGURE  38  (WEBER.) 

The  ctotted  lines  represent  the  actual  course  of  the  points,  while  the  unbroken 
curved  lines  indicate  the  course  as  felt. 

the  skin,  for  example,  across  the  face,  so  as  to  describe  parallel 
lines  (ad  and  be  in  Fig.  38),  the  person  experimented  upon  will 
feel  the  two  points  diverge  nearthemouth,asshownintheaccom- 
panying  figure. 

Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the  fact  that  we  frequently 
experience  secondary  sensations— that  is,  a  single  strong  sensation 
(primary)  will  be  accompanied  by  another  totally  different,  both 
as  to  quality  and  intensity.  The  already  mentioned  phenomenon 
of  color  audition  in  which  definite  color  sensations  are  evoked  by 
a  sound  stimulus,  also  the  cases  instanced  in  which  letters,  words 
and  figures  are  colored,  would  naturally  be  grouped  under  these 


THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE.  203 

secondary  perceptions.  These  color  sensations  can  be  evoked  by 
taste  and  smell  stimulations  as  well  as  by  visual  and  auditory 
means  of  arousement.  I  have  a  pupil  in  one  of  my  university 
classes,  who  associates  colors  with  taste,  and  cannot  rid  himself 
of  these  secondary  and  illusory  sensations.  For  example,  to  him 
the  taste  of  melon  is  " green,"  that  of  the  apple  is  "red,"  while 
beans  taste  "brown,"  etc.  I  know  a  German  professor  who 
always  has  an  acute  sensation  of  pain  in  his  shoulder  every  time 
he  sees  a  yellow  light — a  real  pain  from  which  he  suffers  excru- 
ciating agony— -nevertheless  a  pseudo-sensation,  or  better,  a  sec- 
ondary perception. 

And  so  we  might  go  on,  but  a  sufficient  number  of  facts  have 
been  adduced  to  show  that  we  are  all  subject  to  illusions  of  sense. 
From  your  own  fund  of  experiences  you  can  call  up  many  such 
illusions  that  illustrate  the  point  under  discussion  much  better 
than  the  examples  I  have  here  instanced. 

In  hallucination,  as  distinguished  from  illusion,  all  objective 
stimulus  is  wanting.  In  hallucination  the  mental  picture  is  purely 
a  creation  and  projection  of  mind.  In  normal  life  perfect  hallu- 
cinations in  the  strict  sense  are  exceedingly  rare.  That  they  do 
occur  is  vouched  for  by  the  hundreds  of  well  authenticated  cases 
reported  to  the  "  Society  for  Psychical  Research,"  not  only  in 
England  and  Germany,  but  also  in  our  own  country.  Illusions 
are  the  experiences  of  most  people;  hallucinations  of  compara- 
tively few.  The  following  case  recently  came  to  the  knowledge  of 
the  writer,  and  is  thoroughly  vouched  for,  but  has  never  been  pub- 
lished as  yet.  The  parties  concerned  in  the  narrative  are  all  well 
known  to  the  writer.  Mr.  B.,  a  man  45  years  of  age,  utterly  de- 
void of  sentiment,  very  matter-of-fact,  cool-headed  and  business- 
like, is  a  large  lumber  dealer  in  Ohio.  One  morning  he  was 
talking  through  a  piece  of  timber  which  he  had  purchased  a 
/short  time  before,  and  was  engaged  in  directing  the  lumbermen 
as  to  what  trees  should  be  cut  and  how  long  the  logs  should  be; 
where  the  oak,  hickory  and  walnut  respectively  should  be  piled, 
etc.  While  in  the  very  midst  of  this  work  of  directing  his  men 
lie  heard  a  voice  like  that  of  his  daughter  calling,  "Father! 


204  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

come,  help  me !  "  He  was  observed  to  grow  very  pale  by  his  fore- 
man and  others  standing  near,  but  no  one  could  divine  the  cause 
as  he  himself  said  nothing.  He  dropped  his  work,  though  it  was 
only  in  the  middle  of  the  forenoon,  drove  to  his  home  in  the 
neighboring  town  and  lay  down  from  mere  exhaustion.  His  wife 
noticing  his  strange  appearance,  so  very  unusual,  as  he  had  never 
in  his  life  been  ill,  sent  immediately  for  the  family  physician.  To 
the  physician  Mr.  B.  confidentially  related,  for  the  first  time,  what 
had  occurred  in  the  woods.  A  few  moments  later  a  messenger 
boy  brought  a  telegram  which  stated  that  his  daughter  (who 
had  been  visiting  at  Columbus  for  two  weeks,  and  who  was  ex- 
pected home  the  following  Saturday  evening)  was  smitten  with 
typhus  fever,  and  requested  that  he  come  at  once  to  her  bedside. 
He  did  so,  finding  her  delirious,  and  that  she  had  been  calling  for 
her  father  ever  since  ten  o'clock  that  morning — the  very  same 
hour  at  which  he  heard  the  voice  so  clearly,  when  in  the  timber 
no  less  than  forty  miles  away. 

While  such  hallucinations  are  very  infrequent  so  far  as  nor- 
mal, healthy  persons  are  concerned,  they  are  exceedingly  common 
occurrences  with  the  insane,  and  like  illusions  proper,  they  occur 
within  the  realm  of  each  of  the  senses. 

With  regard  to  the  relative  frequency  of  hallucination  of  each 
of  the  senses  as  compared  with  each  other,  they  occur  in  the  fol- 
lowing order — hearing,  sight,  taste,  touch  (including  muscle 
sensations),  and  smell.  This  is  certainly  the  order  of  frequency 
among  the  insane,  though  some  writers  maintain  that  among 
the  sane,  visual  hallucinations  are  more  common  than  those  ot 
hearing.  As  yet,  however,  there  is  not  sufficient  evidence  with 
which  to  substantiate  any  such  claim. 

Among  auditory  hallucinations  the  hearing  of  voices  is  the 
most  common,  and  oftentimes  these  voices  assume  the  character 
of  a  mandate,  in  which  case  they  become  exceedingly  serious.  Many 
homicidal  and  suicidal  acts  perpetrated  by  the  insane  can  be  at- 
tributed to  the  commands  of  these  imaginary  voices.  Some 
patients  will  do  nothing  whatever,  even  the  most  inconsequential 
things,  without  consulting  an  imaginary  friend  of  whom  ques- 


THE  ILLUSIONS  OF  SENSE.  205 

tions  and  directions  are  asked,  and  replies  received,  resulting  in 
implicit  obedience.  Even  if  the  hallucinatory  command  be  to 
abstain  from  food,  to  lacerate  the  flesh,  to  commit  a  crime — no 
matter  what  —  it  is  faithfully  carried  out  and  realized  in  action. 

These  hallucinations  of  hearing;  often  occur  in  deaf  people;  in- 
deed, imperfect  hearing  is  sometimes  the  real  cause  of  the  disorder. 
Among  the  visual  hallucinations,  the  most  frequent  forms  seen 
are  faces,  sometimes  horrible,  grotesque,  and  terrible  in  expres- 
sion, even  so  much  so  as  to  cause  an  epileptic  seizure.  That  the 
retina  is  not  the  seat  of  these  visual  perceptions  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  hallucinations  of  sight  may  occur  when  the  optic  nerves 
are  atrophied  and  the  person  totally  blind. 

The  taste  hallucinations  are  of  importance  since  with  the  in- 
sane they  frequently  suggest  that  the  food  has  been  tampered 
with.  Patients  often  refuse  to  take  food  as  a  result  of  these  hal- 
lucinations of  taste,  because  they  are  coupled  in  their  minds  with 
some  conspiracy  or  plot. 

Hallucinations  of  smell  may  be  either  pleasant  or  unpleasant, 
more  frequently  the  latter.  Hallucinations  of  smell  may  be  due 
to  lesions  in  the  brain,  or  to  some  disease  in  the  sense  organs. 
Any  sort  of  lesion  in  the  tempero-sphenoidal  lobe  [in  which  the 
hearing  center  is  located],  is  very  apt  to  produce  hallucinations 
of  smell.  The  pleasant  smells  are  chiefly  those  of  flowers  or  the 
artificial  odors  of  colognes  and  perfume  extracts. 

Among  tactile  hallucinations  must  be  included  those  of  com- 
mon feeling — the  organic  and  muscular  sensations.  Some  insane 
patients  complain  of  painful  sensations  which  are  totally  subjec- 
tive in  their  origin.  The  hypochondriac  is  familiar  to  us  all.  The 
hallucination  sometimes  takes  the  form  of  a  delusion  with  refer- 
ence to  the  transformation  of  themselves,  of  their  physical  organ- 
ism into  some  other  substance  than  their  body.  It  is  not  so  very 
infrequent  that  a  patient  claims  that  he  has  become  petrified,  or 
is  transformed  into  wood  or  glass.  The  writer  remembers  a  pa- 
tient who  believed  his  right  arm  to  be  of  glass  (and  he  wasn't  a 
base  ball  pitcher  either).  Another  patient  came  under  my  obser- 
vation who  thought  her  entire  body  had  been  transformed  into 


206  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

glass  and  she  would  not  turn  her  head  or  open  her  mouth,  even 
absolutely  refusing  to  eat,  for  fear  she  would  crack  her  face.  An- 
other patient  refused  to  wash  his  hands  in  water,  for  fear  the 
water  would  induce  decay  since  his  hands  were  made  of  wood. 
He  didn't  seem  to  realize  that  decay  was  all  the  more  sure  if  he 
failed  to  perform  his  ablutions. 

Hallucinations,  and  illusions  also,  may  be  caused  in  the  sane 
by  alcohol, those  of  sight  being  the  most  frequent.  Opium, bella- 
donna, Indian  hemp,  etc. ,  are  known  to  produce  similar  effects.  It 
is  exceedingly  rare  that  hallucinations  of  more  than  one  sense 
are  observed  in  the  same  person. 


LESSON   XVII. 

HABIT. 

A  statement  of  M.  Leon  Dumont,  expresses  a  well-known  law 
of  nature.  It  is  to  this  effect :  "  Every  one  knows  how  a  garment 
after  having  been  worn  a  length  of  time,  clings  to  the  shape  of 
the  body  better  than  when  new.  There  has  been  a  change  in 
the  fiber  and  this  changeisa  new  habit  of  cohesion.  A  lock  works 
better  after  having  been  used  for  some  time.  At  the  outset  more 
force  was  required  to  overcome  certain  roughness  in  the  mech- 
anism. The  overcoming  of  this  resistance  is  a  phenomenon  that 
is  met  with  in  every  department  of  nature.  It  is  a  phenomenon 
of  habituation.  It  costs  less  trouble  to  fold  a  paper  when  it 
has  been  folded  already;  and  just  so  with  the  nervous  system,  the 
impressions  of  the  outer  world  fashion  for  themselves  more  and 
more  appropriate  paths,  and  these  vital  phenomena  recur  under 
similar  excitement  from  without,  when  they  have  been  uninter- 
rupted for  a  certain  time." 

This,  then,  is  a  general  statement  of  the  philosophy  of  habit. 
It  touches  not  only  the  department  of  mind,  but  of  body  and  ex- 
ternal nature  as  well.  All  the  recent  writers  admit  the  physical 
principle  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  our  habitual  activities.  Thereis 
no  chapter  in  Psychology  that  is  of  more  importance  to  the 
teacher  than  that  which  deals  with  the  habitual  activities  of  the 
individual,  especially  of  the  child. 

You  will  remember  that  in  a  previous  chapter  the  assertion 
was  made, and  clearly  demonstrated,  that  body  and  mind  arein- 
timately  associated,  that  mind  influences  the  condition  of  the 
body,  and  that  the  states  of  body  influence  the  mind  in  its  nature 
and  functions.  This  is  demonstrated  with  especial  clearness  when 
we  come  to  speak  of  habit. 

Just  as  a  dislocated  finger,  a  sprained  ankle,  or  a  broken  limb  are 

(207) 


208  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

in  danger  of  being  dislocated  or  broken  again;  just  as  a  scar  is 
more  liable  to  become  inflamed  and  suffer  pain  and  cold,  than  are 
the  neighboring  parts;  just  as  tissue  that  has  once  been  attacked 
by  different  forms  of  disease  is  more  subject  to  a  recurrence  of  the 
disease  than  any  other;  so  it  is  with  those  activities  in  which  the 
body  has  once  been  engaged  under  the  control  of  the  will,  they 
take  place  more  easily  and  with  greater  facility  and  exactness, 
than  movements  that  are  just  newly  initiated.  This  is  especially 
true  when  we  come  to  speak  of  the  nervous  system,  that  portion 
of  our  organism  which  is  more  intimately  concerned  with  the 
mental  activities  than  any  other.  If  a  certain  one  of  our  sense 
organs  is  stimulated,  e.  g.,  the  eye,  ear,  or  the  hand,  and  that 
stimulus  is  carried  to  the  brain  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  sen- 
sation, by  traversing  a  certain  path,  a  second  stimulus  is  more 
likely  to  follow  the  path  of  the  first,  than  any  other  possible  path, 
provided  the  conditions  remain  the  same.  Let  us  illustrate:  The 
first  ray  of  light  that  enters  the  child's  eye  and  passes  through 
the  lens  and  humors,  follows  its  course  along  the  optic  nerve  to 
the  brain,  but  pursues  the  path  of  least  resistance  and  the  nervous 
impulse  terminates  in  a  given  brain  center.  Now  the  second  ray 
of  light  that  stimulates  the  child's  eye  (provided  the  conditions 
remain  the  same)  does  not  evoke  a  nervous  impulse  that  will  take 
a  new  route, but  the  path  previously  followed  will  be  the  one  selected 
in  the  second  case.  So  in  the  early  life  of  the  child,  when  the  brain 
is  plastic  and  these  sensation  impulses  are  continually  coming 
in  from  the  surface  of  the  body,  certain  paths  are  clearly  determined 
beforehand,  which  become  more  and  more  fixed,  more  clearly  de- 
fined, and  more  permanent,  as  the  activities  of  thechild  increase, 
and  his  age  advances. 

But  not  only  the  impulses  that  are  carried  in  make  permanent 
paths  for  themselves,  but  also  those  impulses  that  find  expres- 
sion in  certain  movements  of  the  body  (the  acts  of  will)  also  es- 
tablish such  paths.  For  example:  If  my  hand  is  touched  with 
a  red-hot  iron,  as  quick  as  the  sensation  is  experienced,  the  hand 
is  withdrawn  from  the  painful  stimulus.  In  withdrawing  my 
hand  from  the  hot  iron,  I  make  a  certain  definite  movement.  If 


HABIT.  209 

at  a  later  time  my  hand  and  the  red-hot  iron  should  again  be 
brought  into  close  proximity,  I  am  more  apt  to  withdraw  my 
hand  in  the  self-same  way  that  I  did  before,  rather  than  to  initi- 
ate a  new  kind  of  movement. 

You  have  noticed  the  same  thing  in  the  practical  activities  of 
daily  life,  not  only  in  man,  but  in  the  higher  animals.  The  horse 
that  has  occupied  a  certain  stall  in  a  stable  for  a  considerable 
length  of  time  will,  when  left  to  his  own  free  choice,  go  to  the  same 
manger  from  which  he  has  eaten  for  so  long  a  time  rather  than 
to  any  other.  It  is  only  by  great  effort,  and  even  severe  punish- 
ment, that  he  can  be  taught  to  occupy  other  quarters.  The  dog 
insists  upon  sleeping  in  the  same  corner  and  upon  the  same  mat 
that  has  been  his  for  so  long.  A  warmer  and  more  comfortable 
place  has  no  attraction  for  him.  He  feels  more  satisfied  with  the 
old  set  of  conditions.  If  we  have  made  our  home  in  the  self-same 
building  for  a  long  period  of  time,  we  find  ourselves  absent-mind- 
edly walking  to  the  same  house,  showing  that  the  habit  of  mak- 
ing that  place  our  destination  is  deep-seated  and  fixed  in  the  or- 
ganism itself.  I  know  a  little  child  that  had  been  permitted  in  its 
early  infancy  to  hold  a  handkerchief  in  her  hand  as  she  lay  in  her 
crib.  After  having  done  this  for  some  time,  it  was  noticed  that 
she  always  asked  for  that  knotted  handkerchief  before  she  could 
go  to  sleep.  She  somehow  came  to  consider  that  that  particular 
handkerchief  and  the  phenomena  of  sleeping  were  intimately  and 
directly  associated,  so  that  until  the  time  she  was  eight  years  of 
age  it  was  found  impossible  for  her  to  attain  normal  sleep  with- 
out holding  the  handkerchief  in  her  hand.  This  is  an  extreme 
example  showing  how  little  things,  that  take  their  rise  in  a  purely 
incidental  manner,  become  registered  upon  our  organism  and  so 
deeply  seated,  that  only  supreme  effort  and  continual  endeavor, 
at  great  inconvenience,  will  eradicate  them. 

As  already  intimated,  the  question  of  habit  is  one  oi  great  im- 
portance and  deep  significance  for  every  teacher  as  he  comes  in 
contact  with  the  child  mind.  This  is  more  clearly  shown  when 
we  come  to  consider  the  practical  effects  of  habit. 

(1)  Habit  always  diminishes  the  amount  of  conscious  atten- 

L.  P.— 14 


210  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tion  with  which  our  acts  are  performed.  The  pianist,  in  first 
learning  to  play  his  instrument,  finds  that  each  movement  of  the 
fingers  must  be  closely  attended  to,  that  the  relative  position  of 
the  keys  musi  be  closely  observed,  and  even  then  he  is  continually 
making  mistakes ;  but  after  a  given  amount  of  practice,  when  these 
muscular  movements  have  become  habitual,  he  can  play  while 
following  conversation  or  attending  to  something  else.  He  sim- 
ply glances  at  the  musical  score  and  his  fingers  perform  the  nec- 
essary movements. 

The  hunter,  as  he  stalks  the  deer  through  the  forest,  seeing  his 
game  break  suddenly  into  his  field  of  vision  and  come  within  rifle 
range,  raises  his  gun,  aims  and  shoots  before  he  is  really  aware 
of  having  done  so.  His  organism  has  become  trained  so  that  it 
will  respond  to  such  a  stimulus  invariably,  and  without  a  large 
amount  of  conscious  attention.  The  sight  of  a  deer  always 
means  to  him,  the  raising  of  the  gun,  aiming  it  and  the  discharge 
of  its  load. 

Even  in  our  simplest  and  most  instinctive  activities,  we  find 
that  we  are  moro  and  more  facilitated  in  carrying  out  these 
movements  when  they  have  become  habitual.  For  example:  The 
child  in  learning  to  walk,  first  attends  to  each  movement  that  is 
necessary  to  locomotion.  His  eye  selects  the  spot  where  he 
wishes  to  put  his  foot,  and  also  watches  the  foot  as  it  is  placed 
forward  in  the  chosen  position.  Every  gentleman  tips  his  hat  on 
meeting  a  lady,  but  he  does  it  without  thinking  just  how  the  nec- 
essary movements  of  the  hand  and  the  arm  are  to  be  made.  The 
modus  operandi  is  not  the  object  of  his  conscious  attention  to 
any  extent.  He  could  not  describe  the  exact  manner  and  move- 
ment in  which  he  has  performed  this  simple  action.  This  and 
similar  examples  go  to  show  that  the  amount  of  conscious  atten- 
tion that  accompanies  our  habitual  movements  is  very  small. 
This  is  a  very  significant  fact,  for  we  know  that  attention  means 
effort,  and  if  habitual  movements  are  performed  with  little  or  no 
conscious  attention,  it  is  the  same  thing  as  saying  that  they  are 
done  with  little  or  no  conscious  effort.  This  brings  then  to  our 
notice  another  important  consideration. 


HABIT.  211 

(2)  Habitual  movements  are  less  fatiguing  than  the  other  ac- 
tivities of  which  we  are  capable.    If  certain  activities  are  per- 
formed through  habit,  we  find  that  there  is  leos  wea,r  and  tear 
than  if  the  movement  belonged  to  another  category.    This  is 
based  in  a  measure  upon  what  we  said  at  the  outset  concerning 
the  fact  that  each  successive  stimulus  of  an  end-organ  of  sense 
tends  to  follow  the  same  path  that  was  taken  by  the  initial  sen- 
sation, because  this  is  the  path  of  least  resistance.    As  the  school- 
boy's sled  goes  down  the  hill  with  greater  ease  and  speed  after 
the  path  has  been  well  worn  than  it  did  when  first  broken,  so  our 
sensations  come  to  follow  accustomed  paths  with  greater  facility 
and  directness.  It  is  a,  principle  of  mental  economy  that  as  many 
as  possible  of  our  activities  should  become  habitual.    To  present 
the  matter  in  a  crude  way,  we  may  say  that  a  well-ordered 
system  of  habits  constitutes  the  greatest  labor-saving  device 
that  could  be  furnished  the  mind.    But  there  is  yet  another  prin- 
ciple of  which,  as  teachers,  we  ought  to  take  cognizance.  It  is  this : 

(3)  Habitual  actions  are  performed  not  only  with  less  effort 
but  in  less  time  than  are  our  other  activities.    Not  only  is  the  at- 
tention lessened  and  the  feeling  of  effort  diminished,  but  the  act 
that  is  performed  through  habit  is  performed  in  a  smaller  time 
interval  than  that  required  for  those  activities  which  result  from 
deliberation  and  choice.     Do  you  not  see  then  that  it  is  of  the 
utmost  value  and  far-reaching  significance  that  there  be  insti- 
tuted in  the  child's  mind  certain  habitual  modes  of  thought,  so 
that  his  mental  exercises  may  be  done  at  less  expense  to  the  capi- 
tal invested— his  developing  mind  and  his  body  as  they  together 
unfold  their  latent  powers?    The  good,  old  grand-dame,  as  she 
knits  in  a  purely  mechanical  way,  talking  continually,  seems  to 
knit  without  any  great  amount  of  effort,  certainly  without  any 
degree  of  conscious  attention ;  but  if  she  should  happen  to  drop 
a  stitch  she  is  at  once  aware  of  the  fact,  so  you  see  that  after  all, 
the  mind  is  following  a  seemingly  mechanical  activity  and  is 
aware   of  each  movement,  exercising  its  dominion  over  these 
movements  with  an  exceedingly  small  amount  of  effort,  but  with 
the  keenest  precision. 


212  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

We  should  also  make  mention  of  one  other  consideration  that 
is  exceedingly  important : 

(4)  Habitual  movements  are  more  precise  than  are  our  other 
activities  —  tliat  is,  an  act  that  is  done  through  force  of  habit,  as 
we  say,  is  performed  in  a  more  exact  manner  than  if  done  with 
a  large  degree  of  conscious  attention  and  mental  supervision. 

We  now  come  to  some  of  the  more  practical  considerations 
that  cannot  help  but  have  weight  with  every  instructor,  for  no 
teacher  should  be  unmindful  of  the  pedagogical  importance  of  the 
principle  of  habit.  As  Professor  James  so  forcibly  relates:  "  Habit 
is  the  enormous  fly-wheel  of  society— its  most  precious  con- 
servative agent.  It  alone  is  what  keeps  us  all  within  the  bounds 
of  ordinance,  and  saves  the  children  of  fortune  from  the  envious 
uprisings  of  the  poor;  it  alone  prevents  the  hardest  and  most 
repulsive  walks  of  life  from  being  deserted  by  those  brought  up 
to  tread  therein.  It  keeps  the  fisherman  and  deck-hand  at  sea 
through  the  winter;  it  holds  the  miner  in  his  darkness,  and  nails 
the  countryman  to  his  log  cabin  and  to  his  lonely  home  through 
all  the  months  of  snow;  it  protects  us  from  invasion  of  the  desert 
and  the  frozen  zone.  It  dooms  us  to  fight  out  the  battle  of  life 
upon  the  lines  of  our  nature  or  by  early  choice;  or  make  the  best 
of  the  pursuit  which  disagrees,  because  there  is  no  other  for  which 
we  are  fitted,  and  it  is  too  late  to  begin  again." 

You  see,  then,  how  this  principle  of  habit  keeps  those  under 
different  social  conditions  fairly  well  satisfied.  I  have  seen  the 
miner  lying  full  length  on  the  ground,  the  water  dripping  over 
him  from  the  surface  veins  above,  and  in  this  cold  and  wet  con- 
dition digging  with  his  pickaxe,  the  coal  from  the  shallow  strata, 
working  not  less  than  fourteen  hours  a  day  for  the  mere  pit- 
tance of  eight  cents  an  hour.  That  same  man  could  have  changed 
his  occupation,  become  an  apprentice  to  a  machinist  in  the  large 
shops  of  a  neighboring  city,  worked  fewer  hours,  and  received 
much  greater  remuneration.  But  no,  this  he  would  not  do, 
though  he  realized  that  his  work  was  arduous  and  that  it  was 
gradually  making  such  great  demands  upon  his  vital  energy  that 
his  life  must  needs  be  shortened  thereby,  yet  he  persisted  in  fol- 


HABIT.  213 

lowing  the  same  line  of  work,  the  same  old  occupation,  at  greater 
inconvenience  and  discomfort  simply  because  he  had  done  so  for 
so  long  a  time.  Through  the  principles  of  habit,  certain  impres- 
sions had  become  registered  upon  his  organism  in  an  indelible 
manner  and  in  such  a  way  as  to  conspire  toward  making  a 
miner's  life  his  only  natural  atmosphere. 

I  know  an  old  man  who  for  twenty  years  had  been  what  is 
known  to  railroad  men  as  the  "night  caller,"  his  work  being  to 
simply  call  those  engineers  and  firemen  who  were  obliged  to  run 
the  night  trains.  Reaching  an  advanced  age,  after  such  a  long 
term  of  faithful  service,  the  railroad  official  to  whom  he  was  re- 
sponsible and  under  whose  direction  he  worked,  decided  to  give 
him  more  pleasant,  and  what  he  thought  more  congenial  employ- 
ment ;  instead  of  being  compelled  to  work  the  entire  mght,walking 
through  the  streets,  exposed  to  all  sorts  of  weather,  he  was  offered 
a  position  which  would  pay  him  a  little  better  salary  and  at  the 
same  time  exact  shorter  hours  of  labor,  and,  best  of  all,  it  would 
be  in  the  daytime  rather  than  at  night.  At  first  the  old  man  sig- 
nified his  grateful  acceptance,  entered  upon  the  new  work  with  all 
the  vigor  he  could  command,  and  with  complete  success  so  far  as 
the  requirements  of  the  position  were  concerned.  After  a  few 
days  he  became  dissatisfied  with  this  new  and  better  position, 
and  this  dissatisfaction  grew  upon  him  so  that  in  a  short  time 
he  came  to  the  railroad  official  and  begged  that  he  might  be  per- 
mitted to  go  back  to  his  old-time  night  work  even  at  a  less  salary 
than  he  was  then  receiving.  That  is,  he  was  desirous  of  exchang- 
ing what  .ordinarily  would  be  termed  comfort  for  discomfort, 
simply  because  he  had  worked  so  long  at  night  that  he  could  not 
feel  at  home  in  any  other  environment—his  world  of  thought  and 
activity  all  centered  in  that  employment  in  which  he  had  been 
engaged  so  long.  He  had  learned  to  sleep  better  in  the  daytime 
than  at  night,  his  food  did  him  more  good  seemingly  when  eaten 
at  night  than  the  meals  of  which  he  partook  in  the  da3rtime,  and 
so  his  whole  scheme  of  life  had  become  the  reverse  of  that  which 
has  always  been  followed  by  the  majority  of  men. 
Military  men  tell  us  of  riderless  cavalry  horses  which  at  many 


214  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

a  battle  have  been  seen  to  come  together  and  go  through  their 
customary  evolutions,  at  the  sound  of  the  bugle  call.  The  same 
thing  is  shown  in  the  case  of  many  other  animals.  Most  domes- 
tic beasts  beco'me  machines  pure  and  simple.  A  few  years  ago  in 
a  railroad  accident  in  Ohio,  the  train  bearing  a  portion  of  a 
large  traveling  menagerie  was  wrecked.  The  cages  containing 
the  tiger  and  leopard  were  broken  open.  The  tiger  at  first  emerged 
from  the  cage,  and  the  people  were  awe -stricken  to  think  of 
such  a  vicious  animal  being  free  to  roam  at  will  in  the  woods. 
But  presently  it  was  seen  to  creep  back  again  to  the  cage;  be- 
wildered by  its  new  environment,  the  tiger  sought  refuge  in  a  con- 
dition of  things  as  nearly  as  possible  like  that  to  which  it  had 
become  accustomed  after  so  many  years  of  close  confinement,  and 
could  not  be  forced  from  the  cage  to  stay. 

Men  who  have  grown  old  in  prison  have  asked  to  be  re-admitted 
after  having  served  their  time,  and  on  this  simple  request  being 
denied,  they  would  commit  some  crime  that  would  involve  their 
incarceration  in  the  prison  again.  People  like  to  do  things  as  they 
have  always  done  them — like  to  live  as  they  have  always  lived.  In 
other  words,  the  same  habits  of  thought,  of  activity  and  of  life, 
have  become  fixed  and  permanent.  For  this  reason  it  is  more 
difficult  to  elicit  the  interest  of  older  persons  in  a  new  enterprise, 
than  it  is  to  gain  the  enthusiastic  support  of  those  who  are 
younger.  Habit  makes  people  conservative,  and  a  conservative 
man  shrinks  from  new  responsibilities  and  new  relations.  This 
accounts  for  the  fact  that  most  of  the  revolutions  of  the  world 
have  been  wrought  by  young  men;  but  on  the  other  hand,  this 
very  conservatism  is  the  salvation  of  our  social  institutions,  so 
that  the  function  of  the  teacher  is  made  plain,  namely,  to  incul- 
cate those  habits  of  thought,  activity  and  life  that  will  redound 
to  the  best  interests  of  the  individual  himself,  as  well  as  of  the 
state  in  which  he  is  a  citizen,  and  at  the  same  time,  promote  the 
highest  interests  of  society  in  which  he  is  a  member. 

These  habits  are  formed  very  early  in  life,  and  become  so  reg- 
istered on  the  body  that  they  are  overcome  only  with  the  great- 
est difficulty.  Even  at  the  early  age  of  twenty -five  it  is  not  a 


HABIT.  215 

difficult  matter  to  tell  the  young  clergyman  from  the  commercial 
traveler,  or  the  young  doctor  from  the  young  lawyer.  The  pro- 
fessional mannerisms  have  already  fastened  their  hold,  and  one 
cannot  escape  them.  His  chosen  profession  then  becomes  the 
easiest  line  for  him  to  follow,  and  contributes  a  large  share 
towards  his  remaining  in  the  position  he  has  once  chosen. 

Were  it  not  for  the  force  of  habit  there  would  be  too  much 
changing  of  vocation  and  society  would  become  disorganized 
into  a  seething  chaos.  The  law  of  habit,  though  often  unrecog- 
nized, is  as  strong  and  inexorable  as  any  of  the  laws  of  nature. 
As  the  gravitation  keeps  each  planet  within  its  own  clear  and 
well  defined  orbit,  so  man  is  kept  in  his  proper  course  through- 
out all  his  activities  by  means  of  habit.  The  great  thing, 
-then,  in  all  education  is  to  see  to  it  that  the  habits  of  the  child 
are  of  the  right  kind.  This  is  the  same  as  saying  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  every  teacher  to  see  to  it  that  every  child  makes  his 
organism,  his  body,  his  nervous  system,  his  ally  instead  of 
his  enemy.  One  of  the  greatest  teachers  in  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic church  caught  this  idea  when  he  said,  "  Give  me  the  first  seven 
years  of  a  child's  life  and  I  can  tell  you  what  manner  of  man  he 
will  become."  If  the  pupil  be  kept  faithfully  at  work  a  certain 
number  of  hours  of  each  day  in  perfecting  the  development  of  his 
mind  and  the  growth  of  his  body,  no  one  need  have  any  fear  as 
to  the  final  result  that  awaits  him.  Mere  intention  is  not  enough 
of  a  basis  upon  which  to  judge  of  one's  character.  We  judge  of 
character  by  one's  actions.  We  tell  what  a  man  is  by  what  he 
does,  just  as  we  tell  what  any  object  in  nature  is  by  its  qualities. 
Character  is  abiding  choice.  It  is  made  up  of  certain  converging 
lines  of  activity  that  have  become  so  deeply  engraved  upon  our 
organism,  that  tendencies  to  act  in  certain  directions  when  ap- 
propriate occasions  arise,  have  become  established.  Mere  emo- 
tional enthusiasm  does  not  count;  action,  and  action  only, is  the 
standard  by  which  we  form  our  estimate  of  individuals. 

Once  while  in  London  on  a  very  cold  and  bleak  February  day 
(one  of  those  dreariest  of  days  which  only  London  can  furnish), 
as  I  was  walking  hurriedly  through  the  streets  I  noticed  a  coach- 


216  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

man  poorly  clad,  shivering  in  his  seat,  waiting  in  front  of  a  build- 
ing quite  unique,  namely,  a  Cat  Hospital.  The  lady  whose  servant 
he  was,  had  found  a  stray  cat  on  the  street  and  had  this  coach- 
man drive  two'  miles  through  the  blustering  winter's  day,  poorly 
clad  and  shivering  with  cold,  in  order  that  she  might  give  this 
homeless  cat  a  comfortable  place.  The  comfort  of  the  cat  was 
prized  more  highly  than  that  of  her  servant.  You  excuse  her  by 
saying  that  she  meant  well — that  her  intentions  were  good.  The 
same  might  be  said  of  those  persons  who  are  quick  to  weep  over 
the  fictitious  personages  in  the  play  of  a  melodrama,  while  at  the 
same  time  real  persons  are  allowed  to  go  unclothed,  unfed  and 
unsheltered.  This  same  thing  shows  itself  in  certain  habits  of 
philanthropy.  One  man  will  give  to  charity  only  when  he  can 
become  a  patron  of  the  charity  ball,  paying  a  fabulous  price  for 
a  box,  and  in  no  other  way  .can  he  be  induced  to  help  the  suffer- 
ing of  the  lower  classes  of  society.  Another  individual  refrains 
instinctively  (which  means  habitually)  from  any  such  ostenta- 
tion, not  letting  his  right  hand  know  what  his  left  hand  doeth, 
for  some  giving  is  actually  "  left-handed,"  i.  e.,  not  controlled  by 
the  same  side  of  the  brain  as  are  the  other  activities. 

You  have  seen  people  who  are  merely  bundles  of  emotion,  who, 
instead  of  being  guided  by  habits  of  thought  are  subject  only  to 
habits  of  feeling.  The  chief  element  in  their  makeup  is  what  may 
be  styled,  and  is  commonly  known  as  "sentimental  gush." 
Everything  that  such  a  one  does, is  done  from  emotional  springs 
of  action  rather  than  as  the  result  of  cool,  clear  intellectual  choice. 
I  am  reminded  in  this  connection  of  a  little  story  which  well  illus- 
trates the  point  under  consideration.  Shortly  after  the  war, 
an  Illinois  man  thought  he  would  build  a  river  steamer  from 
what  remained  of  the  several  war  ships  that  were  used  on  the 
Mississippi  river  during  the  Civil  War,  by  rebuilding  them  so 
as  to  be  used  as  freight  vessels  along  this  great  channel  of 
navigation.  He  took  the  hull  of  one  vessel,  the  boiler  from 
another,  engines  from  another,  and  his  various  other  equip- 
ment from  still  other  vessels.  After  this  conglomeration  was 
gotten  together,  the  various  parts  being  arranged  in  order, 


HABIT.  217 

and  the  reconstructed  ship  was  ready  to  be  launched,  he  in- 
vited a  party  of  friends  to  accompany  him  on  this  vessel  when 
it  made  its  first  trip.  The  vessel  was  gaily  decorated  and  all 
was  auspicious  for  a  delightful  run  to  New  Orleans.  The  vessel 
started,  a  full  head  of  steam  was  on,  all  was  going  well 
when  it  met  another  vessel  coming  up  stream.  It  was  decided  to 
salute  the  approaching  vessel  by  an  appropriate  blast  of  the 
whistle,  but  on  this  being  done  the  engines  stopped,  for  it  took 
all  the  steam  to  blow  the  whistle.  So  it  is  with  some  people.  All 
of  their  energy  and  vitality  goes  to  feed  a  certain  emotional  en- 
thusiasm which  profits  no  one,  unless  coupled  with  intellectual 
choice.  Now  the  function  of  the  teacher  is  primarily  the  training 
of  the  habits  of  the  mind.  In  thus  training  the  habits  of  the  indi- 
vidual he  has  before  his  mind  as  its  highest  aim,  the  completed, 
rounded  out  development  of  the  child.  Intellect,  sensibility  and 
will  should  each  have  its  due  share  of  attention  from  the  teacher, 
and  this  done,  the  child  cannot  help  but  be  a  force  for  good  in 
the  state  and  in  society.  "  Nothing  succeeds  like  success  "  and 
nothing  contributes  so  much  to  success  as  well  organized  habits, 
and  for  the  reasons  named  a<t  the  outset,  that  habitual  actions 
are  performed  with  less  effort,  are  less  fatiguing,  demand  less 
conscious  attention,  take  less  time,  and  result  in  more  precise 
forms  of  activity  than  any  other  that  are  performed.  How  es- 
sential then  it  is  that  seasoned,  well-trained  habits  be  inculcated, 
so  that  the  development  of  the  child  may  proceed  without  hinder- 
ance  toward  the  true  goal — the  perfected  manhood. 

Education  cannot  create  anything  new ;  it  can  only  develop 
and  unfold  the  already  existing  faculties  of  the  human  mind.  Do 
you  not  see  that  this  great  end  is  best  achieved  by  the  aid  of  one 
of  education's  most  helpful  servants— habit?  The  foundation  of 
these  habits  transforms  activities  originally  performed  with 
great  slowness  and  effort,  thereby  entailing  much  fatigue,  into 
skillful,  facile,  and  dextrous  actions. 

Children  cannot  be  taught  by  maxims,  precepts  and  proverbs. 
These  are  continually  eluding  memory's  grasp.  How  admirably 
that  old  philosopher,  John  Locke,  puts  the  matter  when  he  says : 


218  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

"As  the  years  advance,  they  bring  greater  freedom  from  re- 
straint, and  the  boy  must  often  be  left  to  his  own  guidance, 
because  no  mentor  can  be  ever  at  his  side  except  the  one  created 
in  his  own  mind  by  sound  principles  and  steady  habits.  It  is 
true  this  is  the  best  and  safest  one,  and  therefore  worthy  01  the 
highest  consideration ;  for  we  must  expect  nothing  from  precau- 
tionary maxims  and  good  precepts,  though  they  be  deeply  im- 
pressed on  the  mind,  beyond  the  point  at  which  practice  has 
changed  them  to  firm  habits" 

The  words  of  Niemeyer  are  equally  pertinent :  "  The  familiariz- 
ing of  young  people,  even  from  their  earliest  years,  with  habits  of 
order,  cleanliness,  decency,  and  politeness,  will  not  be  without 
lasting  effects  upon  their  inner  life.  Children  take  their  first  steps 
toward  civilization  in  these  matters.  The  love  for  regularity  is 
thus  formed.  Evil  habits  are  forgotten  by  disuse.  The  more 
rarely  evil  traits  have  an  opportunity  of  appearing,  the  more 
the  causes  are  removed  by  which  they  are  excited,  the  more  they 
will  lose  in  strength  just  as  physical  powers  relax  when  not 
exercised." 

I  think  it  is  plain  to  all  of  us,  that  the  best  thing  to  do  is  to 
make  automatic  and  habitual,  as  early  as  possible,  just  as  many 
useful  actions  as  we  can,  guarding  carefully  against  growing  into 
any  ways  that  would  be  harmful  to  our  mental  or  moral  health, 
as  carefully  as  we  would  against  the  ravages  of  disease  in  its  en- 
deavor to  make  onslaughts  upon  our  physical  well-being.  There 
is  a  great  mental  saving  when  one  can  relegate  the  details  of  his 
daily  life  to  the  domain  of  habit.  The  more  we  do  this,  the  more 
time  and  energy  there  is  saved  for  the  mind's  higher  powers  in  car- 
rying on  the  more  original  and  complicated  intellectual  processes. 
Otherwise,  it  is  as  if  the  superintendent  of  a  large  factory  gave 
his  attention  to  little  matters  of  detail,  such  as  oiling  a  valve 
here,  thro  wing  on  a  belt  there,  or  hauling  cinders  from  the  engine 
room,  instead  of  giving  his  whole  mind  to  the  broader  and  more 
comprehensive  matters  of  policy  that  should  concern  him  as  the 
factory's  great  head.  So  the  mind  can  relegate  certain  mat- 
ters of  detail  to  the  lower  centers,  and  the  activities  themselves 


BABIT.  219 

may  become  automatic  after  certain  great  and  general  principles 
have  been  decided.  Professor  James  puts  it  aptly  when  he  says : 

"There  is  no  more  miserable  human  being  than  one  in  whom 
nothing  is  habitual  but  indecision ,  and  for  whom  the  lighting  of 
every  cigar,  the  drinking  of  every  cup,  the  time  of  rising  and 
going  to  bed  every  day,  and  the  beginning  of  every  bit  of  work, 
are  subjects  of  express  volitional  deliberation.  Full  half  the  time 
of  such  a  man  goes  to  the  deciding  or  regretting  of  matters 
which  ought  to  be  so  ingrained  in  him  as  practically  not  to  exist 
for  his  consciousness  at  all.  If  there  be  such  daily  duties  not  yet 
ingrained  in  any  one  of  my  readers,  let  him  begin  this  very  hour 
to  set  the  matter  right." 

The  acquiring  of  habits  saves  us  from  a  useless  waste  of  intel- 
lectual power,  which  power  could  be  devoted  to  the  execution  of 
higher  aims  and  ideals.  But  not  only  does  habitude  save  power 
— it  also  strengthens  power  already  possessed.  Just  as  the  black- 
smith gains  added  muscular  power  by  the  exercise  of  his  arms  in 
swinging  the  heavy  sledge-hammer,  or  as  the  peasant  woman 
learns  to  carry  immense  burdens  upon  her  shoulders  or  head,  so 
we  by  stubborn  practice  can  induce  a  kind  of  habituation  in  the 
realm  of  our  intellectual  pursuits.  You  know  how  Demosthenes 
conquered  the  drawbacks  of  a  feeble  body  and  defective  vocal 
organs  and  became  a  great  orator.  The  blind,  deaf  mute,  Laura 
Bridgman,  reached  a  high  grade  of  intelligence  by  ceaselessly 
exercising  her  sense  of  touch. 

The  great  secret  of  this  wonderful  development  lies  in  action. 
"Not  by  precept,  though  it  be  daily  heard,"  says  Herbert  Spen- 
cer, "not  by  example,  unless  it  be  followed;  but  only  through 
action,  which  is  often  called  forth  by  the  relative  feeling,  can  a 
moral  habit  be  formed.  The  more  frequently  the  conscious  will 
has  brought  the  conception-process  into  a  certain  direction,  and 
led  it  to  a  distinct  action,  the  less  power  will  be  needed  to  do  it 
again  ;  the  more  easily  will  man  pursue  the  same  course  in  his 
thoughts  and  actions." 

Again,  we  should  never  let  an  exception  occur  until  the  new 
habit  is  firmly  rooted  and  deeply  grounded  in  our  very  life  itself. 


220  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

A  continuity  of  training  is  the  great  means  of  making  the  nerv- 
ous system  our  ally  in  our  endeavor  to  pursue  the  right  course. 
Bain  hits  the  nail  squarely  when  he  says : 

"The  peculiarity  of  moral  habits,  contradistinguishing  them 
from  the  intellectual  acquisitions,  is  the  presence  of  two  hostile 
powers,  one  to  be  raised  into  the  ascendant  over  the  other.  It  is 
necessary,  above  all  things,  in  such  a  situation  never  to  lose  a 
battle.  Every  gain  on  the  wrong  side  undoes  the  effect  of  many 
conquests  on  the  right.  The  essential  precaution,  therefore,  is  so 
-to  regulate  the  two  opposing  powers  that  the  one  may  have  a 
series  of  uninterrupted  successes,  until  repetition  has  fortified  it 
to  such  a  degree  as  to  enable  it  to  cope  with  the  opposition 
under  any  circumstances." 

Or,  as  Bahnsen  so  admirably  states  the  matter:  "One  must 
first  learn, unmoved,  looking  neither  to  the  right  nor  left,  to  walk 
firmly  on,  in  the  straight  and  narrow  path,  before  one  can  begin 
« to  make  one's  self  over  again.'  He,  who  every  day  makes  a  fresh 
resolve,  is  like  one  who,  arriving  at  the  edge  of  a  ditch  he  is  to 
leap,  forever  stops  and  returns  for  a  fresh  run.  Without  un- 
broken advance  there  is  no  such  thing  as  accumulation  of  the 
ethical  forces  possible,  and  to  make  this  possible,  and  to  exercise 
us  and  habituate  us  in  it,  is  the  sovereign  blessing  of  regular 
work.  .  .  .  The  actual  presence  of  the  practical  opportunity 
alone  furnishes  the  fulcrum  upon  which  the  lever  can  rest,  by 
means  of  which  the  moral  will  may  multiply  its  strength  and 
raise  itself  aloft.  He,  who  has  no  solid  ground  to  press  against, 
will  never  get  beyond  the  stage  of  empty  gesture-making." 

And  finally,  let  us  keep  the  faculty  of  effort  alive  by  continual 
exercise.  The  carrying  out  of  certain  fixed  purposes  should  never 
be  interrupted.  There  must  ever  be  perseverance  and  a  continual 
following  up  of  the  first  success,  and  each  subsequent  advantage 
as  well,  until  the  highest  of  principles  are  deeply  and  indelibly 
fixed  and  become  our  own  acquisition  through  the  law  of  habit. 


LESSON  XVIII. 

ATTENTION. 

FOR  the  purpose  of  illustration,  let  us  suppose  that  you  are 
reading  an  interesting  book;  you  are  so  interested  in  its  con- 
tents that  you  are  unmindful  of  surrounding  conditions.  You 
do  not  hear  the  clock  strike;  you  are  unaware  of  the  noisy 
clamor  of  the  street;  the  clatter  of  horses'  hoofs,  the  rumble  of 
carriages,  the  rattle  of  carts,  and  tread  of  passers-by  are  all  un- 
heard by  you ;  you  do  not  recognize  the  changes  that  take  place 
in  the  temperature  of  the  room;  you  are  unaware  of  the  time  as 
it  flies  by  so  rapidly.  The  chair  that  has  seemed  uncomfortable 
heretofore  could  not  now  be  improved  upon;  the  light  that  has 
previously  seemed  dim  and  most  trying  is  now  most  satisfactory; 
the  room  that  has  hitherto  seemed  a  dingy  den  is  practically 
the  cosiest  of  quarters. 

You  ask :  What  is  the  cause  of  all  this?  The  attention  of  my 
student  friend  is  fixed  upon  the  book  he  is  reading;  his  entire 
consciousness  is  so  concentrated  upon  it  that  there  is  no  con- 
sciousness left  for  other  sources  of  sensation,  which,  for  the 
time  being,  are  of  little  or  no  interest  to  him.  Then  you  see 
the  sensations  of  which  we  are  self-conscious  depend  upon  at- 
tention. I  have  read  of  students  (I  have  never  met  them)  so  en- 
grossed in  their  studies  that  they  would  be  utterly  oblivious  of 
surrounding  circumstances,  even  letting  the  fire  go  out  and  al- 
lowing their  rooms  to  become  freezing  cold  without  knowing  it, 
so  interested  were  they  in  their  lessons.  I  know  a  banker  who 
frequently  forgets  to  eat  his  noon  luncheon,  he  is  so  interested  in 
the  work  of  his  office.  "  The  scholar  poring  over  a  mutilated 
passage  of  ancient  manuscript,  to  the  neglect  of  his  appetite,  or 
the  naturalist  patiently  observing  the  movements  of  insects  or 
of  plants,  indifferent  to  cold  and  wet,"  each  supplies  another 

(221) 


222  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

example,  illustrating  a  high  power  of  prolonged  concentration. 
Carpenter  tells  us  of  the  celebrated  Braunschweig  mathematician, 
Gauss,  who,  while  engaged  in  one  of  his  most  profound  investi- 
gations, was  interrupted  by  a  servant  telling  him  that  his  wife 
(to  whom  he  was  most  deeply  attached,  and  who  was  at  this 
time  seriously  ill)  was  very  much  worse.  "  He  seemed  to  hear 
what  was  said  to  him,  but  either  he  did  not  comprehend  it,  or 
immediately  forgot  it  and  went  on  with  his  work.  After  some 
little  time  the  servant  came  again  to  say  that  his  wife  was  sink- 
ing rapidly,  and  begged  that  he  come  at  once  to  her  bedside,  to 
which  he  replied,  '  I  will  come  presently.'  Again  he  relapsed  into 
his  previous  train  of  thought,  entirely  forgetting  the  intention 
he  had  expressed,  most  probably  without  having  distinctly  real- 
ized to  himself  the  import  either  of  the  communication  or  of  his 
answer  to  it.  For  not  long  after  when  the  servant  came  again 
and  assured  him  that  his  mistress  was  dying,  and  that  if  he  did 
not  come  immediately  he  would  probably  not  find  her  alive,  he 
lifted  his  eyes  for  a  moment  and  calmly  replied :  <  Tell  her  to  wait 
till  I  come,'  a  message  he  had  doubtless  often  before  sent  when 
pressed  by  his  wife's  request  for  his  presence  while  he  was  simi- 
larly occupied." 

What  we  actually  perceive  depends  on  attention.  Let  the 
logger,  the  artist,  the  weary  traveler  and  the  hunter  approach 
the  same  forest  and  each  will  place  a  different  estimate  upon 
it,  because  each  looks  at  it  from  a  different  point  of  view. 
Each  sees  a  different  forest  from  that  perceived  by  any  of  the 
others.  The  logger  calculates  the  number  of  "lumber-feet"  the 
choice  timber  will  produce.  The  artist  observes  the  grace  of 
trunk,  the  coloring  of  leaf,  form  and  outline,  light  and  shadow. 
The  weary  traveler  appreciates  it  for  its  delightful  shade  and 
mossy  bed.  The  hunter  values  it  chiefly  for  the  game  that  can  be 
secured  within  it.  You  have  no  doubt  heard  the  story  of  the 
Kentucky  gentlemen  who  regarded  a  beautiful  grove  as  of  little 
value  because  "neither  coon  nor  opossum  had  been  caught  in 
that  grove  for  eight  years."  What  one  perceives,  depends  on 
the  features  of  the  object  to  which  one  gives  his  attention.  Each 


ATTENTION.  223 

of  the  four — logger,  artist,  traveler,  hunter — perceives  a  different 
forest  from  that  perceived  by  the  other,  because  each  attends  to 
a  feature  or  characteristic  quite  different  from  that  which  occu- 
pies the  mind  of  the  other.  I  myself  have  walked  a  thousand 
times  along  the  same  path  without  having  observed  a  certain 
little  crooked  tree  which  was  pointed  out  just  yesterday  by  my 
little  four-year-old  the  first  time  he  passed  by. 

Attention  is  in  every  sense  the  prime  condition  of  all  mental 
operations.  Every  form  of  intellectual  activity  includes  some 
form  of  attention.  Now  as  all  mental  growth  is  merely  the  result 
of  intellectual  activity  and  since  intellectual  activity  involves  at- 
tention, you  can  readily  see  how  intimately  associated  are  the 
active  increase  of  mental  powers — real  mental  growth — and  the 
power  of  attention.  Voluntary  attention,  which  is  ordinarily 
labelled  "concentration,"  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  accurate  obser- 
vation, clear  memory  images,  reasoning,  feeling,  in  fact  all  men- 
tal activity.  The  vividness  of  our  associated  impressions  is 
directly  dependent  on  the  amount  of  attention  given  to  them  the 
first  time  they  were  perceived.  Present  impressions  never  ex- 
ert their  full  force  in  calling  up  associated  impressions  except 
when  they  are  kept  before  the  mind  by  an  act  of  attention. 

We  know  that  the  same  act  of  knowledge,  whether  it  be  in  the 
realm  of  hearing  or  the  realm  of  vision  or  of  touch— no  matter  in 
what  domain  — the  same  act  of  knowledge  may  be  performed  with 
greater  or  less  energy.  I  may  be  endeavoring  to  see  a  certain 
star  in  some  well-known  constellation,  and  desire  to  see  it  in  its 
relation  to  the  other  stars  comprising  the  group.  I  may  make 
but  little  effort  and  am  rewarded  by  seeing  but  little.  In  fact  the 
amount  of  knowledge  gained  is  almost  directly  dependent  upon 
the  amount  of  effort  used  in  the  endeavor  to  gain  the  item  of 
knowledge.  Now  the  greater  or  less  effort  employed  in  the  pro- 
cesses of  knowing  is  called  attention.  Looked  at  etymologically, 
we  find  that  attention  is  first  a  form  of  the  word  "tension"  and 
means  the  effort  with  which  any  one  of  the  mental  processes  may 
be  accompanied.  As  such  an  active  tension  of  the  mental  powers, 
attention  is  opposed  to  the  relaxed  state  of  mind  in  which  there 


224  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

is  no  conscious  exertion  to  fix  the  mind  on  any  particular  object. 
What  the  teacher  calls  inattention  (and  properly  too)  is  the  list- 
less, drowsy  state  as  differenced  from  the  state  of  spontaneous 
and  wakeful  activity. 

Before  the  rise  of  attention  the  soul  is  in  a  sort  of  comatose 
state,  allied  to  a  state  of  dreamless  sleep.  The  mind  is  aroused 
from  this  stupid,  lethargic  condition  when  it  begins  to  attend  to 
some  sensational  excitement.  Were  it  not  for  the  acts  of  atten- 
tion, man  would  always  lead  a  vegetative  sort  of  existence.  He 
would  be  ever  in  the  condition  of  infantine  stupor  and  lethargy 
which  characterizes  the  early  days  of  existence.  Were  it  not  for  his 
first  act  of  attention,  which  is  evoked  by  some  sense  stimuli  and 
consequent  excitation,  he  would  ever  remain  as  irresponsive, 
dumb,  unfeeling  and  unintelligent  as  an  oyster.  He  would  pos- 
sess no  power  of  self-direction  and  would  be  no  more  than  a  mere 
rudderless  bark,  or  a  log  floating  here  and  there  in  an  aimless 
way,  drifting  with  wind  and  tide  — the  sport  of  the  elements. 

In  what  way  does  an  act  of  attention  really  contribute  to 
mental  growth?  My  own  view  is  that  the  first  result  is  an  im- 
provement in  the  discriminative  ability  of  the  senses  which,  as 
has  been  pointed  out  in  a  previous  chapter,  lies  at  the  basis  of 
all  exact  comparison,  accurate  memory  and  precise  reasoning. 
Suppose  for  example,  you  are  hefting  weights.  You  desire  to  tell 
which  of  two  is  the  heavier.  To  do  so  correctly  you  must  atteiid 
to  what  you  are  doing.  You  cannot  listen  to  a  conversation 
and  at  the  same  time  judge  between  two  weights  with  the  same 
degree  of  certainty  you  experience  when  you  attend  to  the  weights 
and  the  weights  only.  You  are  listening  to  the  strains  of  the  violin. 
Two  tones  are  produced  that  are  only  different  by  the  slightest 
shade  of  interval.  This  slight  difference  will  be  unobserved  unless 
close  attention  is  paid  to  the  sounds  as  they  are  produced.  Sup- 
pose again,  you  are  trying  to  judge  the  texture  of  cloth,  or  the 
thickness  and  quality  of  writing  paper,  by  the  sense  of  touch .  To 
do  even  this  simple  thing  well,  you  must  attend  to  what  you  are 
doing  or  your  sense  discrimination  will  be  at  fault.  The  imme- 
diate effect  of  an  act  of  attention  is  that  greater  force,  vividness 


ATTENTION.  225 

and  distinctness  are  given  to  the  object  before  the  mind,  because 
one's  discriminative  ability  is  improved  thereby.  Why  can  the 
ten-year-old  boy  tell  one  railroad  engine  from  another  simply  by 
the  sound  of  the  bell,  while  you  or  I  cannot?  Simply  because  he 
has  attended  to  this  peculiar  feature  of  the  locomotive  while  you 
and  I  have  not  done  so.  How  is  it  that  the  stock  buyer  can 
guess  so  nearly  the  correct  weight  of  a  beef,  hog  or  sheep  and  you 
or  I  would  miss  it  by  many  pounds?  You  say  because  "it  is  in  his 
line."  This  merely  means  that  he,  in  order  to  succeed  in  his  busi- 
ness, must  attend  to  such  things,  while  you  and  I  need  not  do  so. 

Just  as  our  sensations  are  rendered  more  distinct  and  clear  by 
our  attending  to  them,  so  are  all  our  other  mental  activities  simi- 
larly affected.  Note  in  our  acts  of  memory.  Have  you  not  fre- 
quently thought  of  this  —  that  what  we  actually  remember  depends 
directly  upon  what  we  attend  to?  Tell  a  story  to  two  children. 
Let  one  of  the  children  be  seated  in  your  lap  where  he  can  watch 
every  expression  of  face,  eyes  and  lips,  catch  every  sound, 
note  every  change  in  modulation  and  quality  of  voice  and 
perceive  every  significant  gesture.  Let  the  other  be  occupied  in 
building  block  houses  on  the  floor,  or  putting  together  a  dis- 
sected map.  Is  it  a  matter  of  conjecture  as  to  which  child  will  be 
best  able  to  reproduce  the  story  —  will  remember  the  best  ?  Why 
is  it  the  old  man  remembers  so  well  the  incident  of  his  early  life 
and  can  remember  scarcely  at  all  what  happened  yesterday? 
Why,  simply  because  he  was  more  interested  in  his  boyhood  ex- 
periences—  he  attended  to  them  more  closely  than  he  did  to  the 
events  of  yesterday. 

Then  our  chains  of  reasoning,  our  conclusions  gained  by  reflec- 
tion, are  very  dependent  upon  our  acts  of  attention.  Take,  for 
example,  the  discovery  and  application  of  that  law  of  cause  and 
effect  in  the  narrow  domain  of  individual  experience.  The  savage 
sees  the  rifle  for  the  first  time.  When  it  is  discharged  he  hears 
the  explosion  and  sees  the  antelope  fall.  He  reasons  that  the 
noise  of  the  explosion  killed  the  antelope,  because  the  sound 
was  the  prime  object  of  his  attention.  My  little  four-year-old 
boy  came  to  me  only  yesterday  insisting  that  his  shoes  be  pol- 

L.  P.-15 


226  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY 

ished  so  they  would  "  squeak."  He  observed  long  ago  that  new 
shoes  squeaked,  and  attributed  this  to  the  most  vivid  picture  in 
his  child  mind  —  the  gloss  or  polish  of  the  shoe  itself. 

To  Newton,  seated  in  his  garden  smoking  his  pipe,  the  falling 
apple  suggested  the  universal  law  of  gravitation.  Why?  Simply 
because  his  attention  was  fixed  upon  the  resemblance  between 
the  fall  of  the  apple  and  the  revolution  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 

Likewise,  in  the  domain  of  feeling  an  exceedingly  important 
element  is  contributed  by  the  attentive  power.  Take  such  a  feel- 
ing as  that  of  disgust— the  more  you  attend  to  it  and  think  of  the 
provoking  cause,  the  more  intense  is  the  feeling  itself.  In  the 
higher  emotions  of  sympathy,  pity  and  the  like,  we  find  that  the 
amount  of  attention  given  to  the  object  determines  the  intensity 
and  scope  of  our  feelings  of  commiseration.  The  sensuous  thrill 
of  music  is  not  experienced  by  one  who  is  inattentive.  The  mas- 
ter painting  evokes  no  sublime  thoughts  in  the  mind  of  him  who 
does  not  really  study  the  painting  in  connection  with  the  ideal  it 
represents.  So  it  is  with  our  bodily  pleasures  and  pains.  In 
times  of  excitement  when  the  attention  is  diverted,  the  keen,  cut- 
ting pangs  of  neuralgia  and  rheumatism  are  for  the  time  being 
unnoticed  and  not  perceived.  It  is  known  that  soldiers  wounded 
in  battle  have  hardly  felt  any  pain  at  the  time,  so  excited  were 
they  by  the  fray.  I  carry  an  ugly  scar  on  my  body  which  was 
caused  by  a  serious  wound  when  about  ten  years  of  age,  but  which 
I  never  felt  until  after  the  excitement  of  the  ball  game  was  over. 

Our  choices  or  acts  of  will  also  depend  largely  upon  the  amount 
and  direction  of  the  attention  exerted.  Suppose  the  boy  has  a 
lesson  to  get  and  another  boy  invites  him  to  go  along  with  him 
to  see  the  circus  parade.  Will  he  go  or  will  he  remain  and  study 
his  lesson  ?  That  depends  on  which  of  the  two  possible  lines  of 
activity  he  gives  most  attention  to  in  his  thought  about  the 
matter.  If  he  dwell  in  thought  only  on  the  fun  of  seeing  the  cir- 
cus and  does  not  permit  his  mind  to  dwell  on  the  consequences  of 
neglecting  his  task,  he  will  go  to  the  show.  But  if  these  condi- 
tions be  reversed  and  he  think  of  the  humiliation  a  failure  at  his 
lessons  will  entail,  of  the  displeasure  it  will  cause  his  parents,  the 


ATTENTION.  227 

probability  of  getting  a  "  black  mark,"  etc.,  he  will  in  all  proba- 
bility remain  at  his  lessons,  though  hard  it  may  be.  So  it  is  in 
reforming  and  helping  men.  You  cannot  change  individuals  by 
merely  prohibiting  certain  lines  of  conduct.  The  everlasting 
"No"  which  confronts  us  on  every  hand  never  makes  manor 
child  one  whit  better.  To  improve  and  elevate  man  means  that 
a  new  possible  line  of  activity  must  be  placed  before  him. 
This  new  object  must  be  of  a  kind  to  interest  him — to  enlist  his 
attention  and  thereby  gain  his  affection.  "  The  expulsive  power 
of  a  new  affection  "  is  the  law  expressive  of  the  changes  that  take 
place  in  men's  lives.  To  illustrate,  in  a  crude  way,  what  I  mean : 
I  am  standing  before  my  class  busily  talking  to  them.  While 
thus  engaged,  and  oblivious  of  all  surroundings,  I  feel  the  touch 
of  a  friend  on  my  shoulder.  I  turn  from  my  class  to  this  friend. 
It  is  one  act.  I  turn  from  class  to  friend.  So  in  all  changes. 
Men  do  not  first  renounce  and  then  take  up  something  new,  but 
do  both  at  once.  The  gospel  of  mere  renunciation  is  the  gospel 
of  negation.  So  with  your  pupils,  do  not  insist  on  their  lopping 
off  certain  habits  before  entering  new  lines  of  activity  and  con- 
duct. Simply  show  the  child  something  he  may  do— not  what 
he  must  not  do  — and  make  this  new  possible  line  interesting  to 
him,  i.  e.,  enlist  his  attention  and  if  you  do  this  successfully,  the 
old  objectionable  habit  will  atrophy. 

Perhaps  this  brief  survey  will  indicate  to  us  something  of  the 
important  function  that  attention  fulfills  in  our  mental  economy. 
The  chief  function  of  education  is  simply  to  direct  the  attention 
along  proper  lines  and  see  to  it  that  the  attention  sustains  itself 
when  certain  of  the  more  important  and  vital  facts  are  brought 
up  for  consideration.  You  readily  see  that  the  great  differ- 
ence between  the  educated  and  the  uneducated  man  is  found  in 
the  fact  that  the  former  has  great  capacity  for  close,  steady,  sus- 
tained, concentrated  attention.  The  importance  of  training  the 
attention  can  scarcely  be  overestimated.  When  you  say  to  your 
pupils,  "Give  me  your  attention,"  what  do  you  really  mean? 
You  mean  that  you  want  them  to  stop  thinking  of  the  game  of 
"  one-old-cat "  played  at  recess ;  of  the  examination  to  come  at  the 


228  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

end  of  the  month ;  of  the  surreptitious  note— indeed  of  everything 
except  what  you  are  saying,  by  simply  allowing  what  you  are  say- 
ing to  co  me  into  the  clearest  self-consciousness  intheirown  minds. 
An  inattentive  mind  is  an  absent  mind.  We  call  people  who  fail 
to  attend  to  certain  of  the  common  affairs  of  daily  life  that  so 
intimately  concern  them,  "  absent-minded."  In  the  first  school 
I  taught  there  was  a  very  observant  little  boy,  whose  seat  was 
near  a  window.  I  remember  one  day  when  asking  the  primary 
class,  of  which  he  was  a  member,  to  name  all  the  various  kinds  of 
flowers  they  had  ever  seen;  several  were  named,  when  up  went 
little  Walter's  hand  with  a  vigorous  eagerness  that  seemed  quite 
unusual.  I  gave  him  a  nod  of  permission  to  speak,  thinking 
he  would  add  his  contribution  to  the  list  of  flowers  already  named 
by  his  fellow  pupils.  But  no  !  He  broke  out  with  the  explosive 
remark,  "Oh,  Teacher!  there's  ten  or  forty  pids  (pigs)  in  the 
school  yard  !  "  Little  good  did  the  crude  lesson  on  flowers  do 
him.  He  was  not  attending  to  the  matter  under  consideration. 
His  mind  was  "  absent "  so  far  as  the  lesson  of  the  class  was  con- 
cerned. 

You  may  have  discovered  in  your  own  experience  that  there 
are  two  kinds  of  attention,  just  as  we  show  later  that  there  are 
two  kinds  of  memory.  I  will  illustrate  what  I  mean.  You  are 
reading  a  rather  dry,  uninteresting  book.  You  find  it  "  up-hill " 
work.  You  hear  a  foot-step  on  the  pavement  below.  You  are 
tempted  to  look  out  of  the  window,  and  do  so,  to  see  who  is  pass- 
ing by.  It  is  only  by  a  supreme  effort  that  you  get  your  mind 
back  to  your  reading.  Or  you  are  in  church ;  the  sermon  may 
not  be  very  interesting,  at  least  not  so  interesting  as  the  bonnet 
or  cloak  worn  by  your  neighbor.  Your  mind  wanders  from  this  to 
that  object,  and  finally  you  find  yourself  thinking  of  something 
quite  remote  from  the' services  going  on  in  your  bodily  presence. 
Only  by  direct  act  of  will  can  you  focus  your  attention  upon  the 
sermon. 

This  leads  us  to  name  the  two  kinds  of  attention,  voluntary 
and  non-voluntary.  In  holding  our  attention  down  to  the  one 
thing— the  book  or  sermon— -in  spite  of  its  effort  to  wander 


ATTENTION.  229 

here  and  there,  in  the  effort  to  so  focus  our  mental  power,  we  are 
performing  an  act  of  voluntary  attention.  But  when  the  mind 
wanders  here,  there  and  yonder,  flitting  from  object  to  object 
like  a  restless  bird,  without  any  direction  or  conscious  effort 
on  our  part,  we  have  non-voluntary  attention.  It  is  the  mere 
force  of  the  object  that  holds  the  mind  in  the  latter  case,  while 
in  the  former,  we  attend  to  a  thing  in  obedience  to  our  wish  to 
know  about  it,  and  by  an  effort  of  will  we  direct  our  mind  to 
investigate  the  fact  that  is  consciously  sought  out.  Or,  to  put  it 
more  clearly :  In  non-voluntary  attention  there  is  but  one  thing 
that  influences  the  mind  — the  thing  attended  to;  in  voluntary 
attention  there  are  two  things  — the  thing  attended  to  and 
some  reason,  motive  or  desire  for  attending  to  it.  Voluntary 
attention  may  be  distinguished  by  the  presence  of  an  aim  or 
purpose.  We  attend  voluntarily  when  we  are  desirous  of  gaining 
some  pleasure,  information,  knowledge,  or  some  real  or  imagined 
benefit  from  the  object  or  thought  which  presents  itself. 

Some  of  us  saw  the  great  and  terrible  conflagration  at  the 
World's  Fair  Grounds  last  summer.  I  refer  to  the  fire  which  de- 
stroyed the  Cold  Storage  building  in  which  nineteen  brave  men 
lost  their  lives.  The  ten  thousand  of  us  who  stood  helplessly  by, 
as  the  men  leaped  from  the  lofty  tower  into  the  blazing  furnace 
of  fire,  could  not  help  but  attend  to  the  horrible  sight.  The  eyes 
of  every  observer  were  riveted  in  morbid  curiosity  on  the  burning 
building  and  the  bits  of  humanity  leaping  through  the  air  to 
instant  death ,  wondering  what  would  next  take  place.  One  could 
scarcely  turn  from  the  horrible  scene  if  he  would.  This  close, 
steady  observation  of  the  burning  building,  while  the  person 
himself  is  utterly  unmindful  of  the  fact  that  he  is  standing  up  to 
his  knees  in  water,  can  be  styled  an  act  of  non-voluntary  atten- 
tion. But  suppose  there  is  a  banker's  clerk  in  the  crowd  who 
realizes  that  he  must  get  his  books  and  papers  back  to  the  bank 
before  three  o'clock  or  lose  his  position.  Remembering  this  and 
turning  reluctantly  away — tearing  himself  away  by  sheer  force 
from  the  terrible  but  fascinating  scene — he  indulges  in  an  act  of 
voluntary  attention. 


230  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Very  young  children  are,  of  course,  incapable  of  voluntary  at- 
tention. The  least  degree  of  observation  will  quite  readily  con- 
firm this.  In  the  very  first  days  there  is  scarcely  any  attention 
of  any  kind.  The  intellectual  life  of  the  new-born  child  consists 
of  a  maze  of  confused  sensations  which  gradually  break  into  clear 
consciousness,  shading  through  non-voluntary  attention  and  the 
various  degrees  of  voluntary  attention,  until  the  individual  can 
of  himself  direct  his  own  mind  in  its  activities  and  search  for 
knowledge. 

This  leads  me  to  speak  of  a  related  fact,  namely,  that  the  stim- 
ulus to  an  act  of  attention  may  be  either  something  external  — 
connected  with  the  object  attended  to — or  something  internal. 
An  external  stimulus  consists  of  some  interesting  feature  or  strik- 
ing characteristic  of  the  object  itself  by  means  of  which  the  atten- 
tion is  attracted  and  arrested.  For  example,  the  child's  atten- 
tion is  aroused  by  the  brilliant  yellow  of  the  orange,  the  tinkle  of 
the  bell,  or  the  "  cuckoo  "  of  the  clock.  An  internal  stimulus,  as 
you  already  surmise,  is  a  motive  or  impulse  in  the  mind,  which 
motive  or  impulse  prompts  the  child  to  put  forth  its  attention  in 
a  particular  direction,  such  as  the  desire  of  a  child  to  please  his 
teacher,  or  to  gain  a  "head  mark,"  or  stand  well  in  his  class,  or 
to  bat  out  a  "liner"  every  time  he  plays  ball.  Under  these  two 
sorts  of  stimuli — the  external  and  internal  —  the  child's  power  of 
attention  develops  with  wonderful  rapidity. 

As  long  as  the  child  is  capable  of  non-voluntary  attention  only , 
he  is  at  the  mercy  of  mere  outer  impressions  — the  effects  of  exter- 
nal stimuli  upon  his  sensorium.  "As  the  course  of  a  stream  de- 
pends upon  the  slope  of  the  ground,  so  the  direction  of  his  atten- 
tion depends  upon  the  attractiveness  of  his  sensations." 

But  one  cannot  go  far  in  the  exercise  of  the  non-voluntary 
attention  without  developing  the  power  to  attend  voluntarily. 
Every  act  of  non-voluntary  attention  on  the  part  of  the  child 
makes  every  act  of  voluntary  attention  easier.  In  his  acts  of  non- 
voluntary  attention  he  is  storing  up  memory  images  of  impres- 
sions pleasant  and  painful.  This  leads  him  to  seek  out  those  im- 
pressions that  give  him  pleasure  and  delight,  and  so  voluntary 


ATTENTION. 


231 


attention  begins.  These  first  acts  of  voluntary  attention  may  take 
place  almost  any  time  after  the  child  is  a  month  old. 

Now  in  the  next  place,  the  underlying  presupposition  of  mod- 
ern Psychology,  that  all  mental  processes  have  a  physical  basis, 
requires  us  to  examine  the  processes  of  attention  with  a  view  to 
discover  their  physiological  correlate  or  "nervous"  substrate. 
That  there  is  such  a  substrate  is  quite  apparent  in  many  forms 
of  attention.  With  reference  to  nearly  all  the  data  coming 
through  the  active  senses— touch  with  movement,  vision,  etc.— 
it  is  evident  that  the  muscular  apparatus  of  the  particular  organ 
engaged  —  e.  g.,  the  hand  or  eye — is  clearly  brought  into  action. 
To  attend  to  any  visible  object,  for  example,  a  pyrotechnic  dis- 
play of  sky  rockets, 
fiery  serpents,  Koman 
candles,  pin -wheels 
and  the  like,  is  to  di- 
rect the  eye  to  it  by 
appropriate  c  o  o  r  d  i- 
nation  of  its  muscles 
and  accommodation 
of  the  lens.  Certain 
muscles  are  thus  in- 
nervated and  produce 
movements  as  the 
concomitant  of  a  sim- 
ple act  of  attention.  While  this  is  going  on,  certain  other  mus- 
cles are  inhibited  from  acting.  Close  attention,  of  necessity, 
involves  arrest  of  movement,  as  is  seen  in  the  cessation  of  loco- 
motion, the  arrest  of  respiration  and  the  modification  of  the 
secretions  during  an  intense  effort  of  thought. 

By  an  act  of  will  attention  may  be  intensified  and  accommo- 
dated to  the  object,  with  a  marked  influence  upon  the  quickness 
and  accuracy  of  the  mental  processes.  Voluntary  increase  of  atten- 
tion diminishes  the  time  rate  of  mental  processes,  while  dispersed 
or  distracted  attention  increases  it.  These  two  changes  in  the  clear- 
ness of  our  perceptions  take  place  in  dependence  upon  the  changes 


FIGURE  39. 


232  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

in  the  amount  of  attention.      This  is  verified  in  our  commonest 


FIGURE  40. 

experiences.    On  awaking  gradually  from  sleep  our  surroundings 
become  less  and  less  obscure  to  our  various  senses  as  the  degree 


FIGURE  41. 

of  voluntary  attention  progressively  rises.    The  voluntary  at- 
tention of  the  individual  will  oftentimes  dissolve  an  illusion  of 


ATTENTION.  233 

sense  and  can  change  the  entire  appearance  of  the  visual  object. 
For  example,  in  Fig.  39,  the  same  arrangement  of  lines  may  be 
seen  entire,  as  a  staircase  or  a  portion  of  an  overhanging  wall,  7. 
e.,  the  point  SL  in  the  figure  can  be  made  to  appear  either  nearer 
or  farther  off  than  b. 

So  in  figures  40  and  41  we  can  see  the  system  of  lines  in  either  of 


FIGURE  42. 

several  ways,  according  as  we  direct  the  attention;  thus  Fig.  40 
maybe  perceived  as  a  hollow  cube  opening  on  any  of  its  sides. 
We  can  see  it  just  as  we  desire  to  see  it,  by  directing  our  attention 


FIGURE  43. 

to  this  or  that  feature  making  it  especially  prominent.    Likewise 
Fig.  41  can  be  made  to  recede  or  stand  out  in  relief. 

In  Fig.  42  there  is  a  series  of  similar  objects  so  arranged  that 


FIGURE  44. 

certain  characteristics  are  emphasized,  thus  claiming  the  atten- 
tion, and  the  entire  figure  or  series  suggests  motion. 

In  the  second  series  (Fig.  43)  the  same  figures  are  used,  but  so 
arranged  as  to  intensify  certain  points  other  than  those  brought 
out  in  the  first  series  —  and  the  entire  series  suggests  rest. 

In  Fig.  44  we  have  the  same  objects  arranged  in  a  still  different 


234  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

order,  and  the  attention  is  called  to  certain  special  features  in 
the  arrangement  so  that  the  entire  figure  suggests  opposite 
motion. 

The  skillful  etcher  takes  advantage  of  us  and  causes  us 
to  see  what  is  not  but  ought  to  be,  in  the  image  thrown  on  the 
retinal  mosaic.  He  furnishes  us  with  a  few  crude  lines  and  the 
mind  supplies  the  rest.  When  a  young  child  in  the  primary 
school,  I  had  some  difficulty  in  spelling  the  word  "together." 
My  teacher  called  my  attention  to  the  fact  that  it  could  be  sepa- 
rated into  three  little  words,  "to"  "get"  "her,"  so  the  word 
stuck  to  me  in  the  form  of  that  rather  forced  set  of  associations, 
and  I  cannot  rid  myself  of  it.  So  in  waiting  for  a  footstep  the 
anxious  mother  strains  her  attention,  and  the  slightest  noise  is 
for  the  instant  interpreted  as  the  sound  she  so  longs  to  hear. 
The  track  athlete,  waiting  for  the  discharge  of  the  pistol  (the 
signal  as  he  starts  in  the  hundred-yard  dash),  will  construe  almost 
any  noise  to  be  the  chosen  signal.  He  will  make  many  a  "false 
start"  at  the  snap  of  a  finger,  the  click  of  the  pistol  hammer,  or 
the  crackle  of  a  broken  stick.  Why?  Because  his  attention  is  so 
heightened  that  every  muscle  is  tense,  and  the  object  thought  of 
—  the  quickest  possible  run — tends  to  realize  itself  in  movement 
at  once.  Prof.  James  instances  the  case  of  the  meaningless 
French  words,  "pas  de  lieu  Rhone  que  nous"  Who  can  recognize 
immediately  the  English,  "paddle  your  own  canoe?"  But  who 
that  has  once  noticed  the  identity  can  escape  having  it  arrest  his 
attention  again  and  again?  You  have  no  doubt  heard  the  tale 
of  the  maiden  lady,  rather  ancient  and  experienced,  but  none  the 
less  ambitious  and  aspiring  (at  the  same  time  quite  sensi- 
tive), who  attended  a  religious  meeting  where  the  song  "Put 
your  armor  on,  my  boys,"  was  sung.  As  soon  as  the  hymn  was 
announced  she  jumped  up  from  her  seat  and  rushed  from  the 
room,  relating  afterward  that  she  would  not  go  to  such  a 
"horrid"  meeting  again,  for  they  sang,  "Put  your  arm  around 
me,  boys." 

Take  another  example,  a  simple  diagram  like  that  shown  in  Fig. 
45.  We  see  it  sometimes  as  two  large,  superimposed  triangles, 


ATTENTION.  235 

again  as  a  hexagon,  with  angles  spanning  its  sides,  and  sometimes 


FIGURE  45. 

as  six  small  triangles  stuck  together  at  their  corners.  The  inside  of 
acommon  pasteboard  mask  or  "  false-face,"  when  painted  like  the 

a 


outside  and  looked  at  with  one  eye  in  direct  light,  looks  convex 


236 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


instead  of  hollow.  Or  bend  an  ordinary  visiting  card  across  the 
middle  so  that  its  halves  form  an  angle  of  about  90° ;  set  it  up- 
right on  the  table  as  in  Fig.  46,  and  look  at  it  steadily  with  one 
eye.  You  can  make  it  appear  to  open  towards  you  or  a  way  from 
you  —  can  make  it  seem  concave  or  convex,  almost  at  will. 

Also  in  Fig.  47,  the  ordinary  representation  of  a  scroll  or 
rolled  sheet  of  paper,  one  can  make  either  the  right  or  left  half 
seem  concave  or  convex  at  will.  When  the  right  half  appears  con- 
vex the  left  appears  concave,  and  vice  versa. 

A  two-colored  painting  or  draw- 
ing appears  quite  different  accord- 
ing as  a  person  comprehends  the 
one  or  the  other  color  as  the 
background.  The  perplexing  and 
tantalizing  pictures  which  some- 
times appear  as  grotesque  forms 
and.  dancing  sprites  among  the 
branches  of  the  trees,  especially 
when  looked  at  against  the  clear 
sky,  do  so  very  readily  if  one  con- 
ceives the  bright  sky  as  the  object 
and  the  dark  branches  as  the  back- 
ground of  the  picture. 

So  you  can  make  wall-paper  pat- 
terns assume  many  fantastic  and 
grotesque  shapes  at  will.  Individ- 
uals have  eyes  for  what  they  wish  to  see  —  ears  for  what  they 
yearn  to  hear,  and  so  on  throughout  all  the  sense  and  thought 
domain. 

But  it  may  also  be  said  that  voluntary  attention,  since  it  is  in 
all  probability  correlated  with  the  activity  of  the  highest,  latest 
developed,  most  sensitive,  and  most  easily  deranged  nerve-cen- 
ters, offers  an  excellent  and  important  means  of  estimating  men- 
tal health,  growth  and  vigor.  [In  a  subsequent  chapter  we  supply 
a  series  of  specific  tests  that  are  well  calculated  to  determine  these 
points.]  Mental  disease  is  commonly  attended  with  disturb- 


FIGURE  47. 


ATTENTION.  237 

ances  of  the  normal  process  of  attention.  When  a  man  is  unable 
to  throw  off  the  cares  of  business  and  ceases  to  give  a  normal 
proportion  of  his  attention  to  other  interests,  we  have  the  mani- 
festation of  an  incipient  tendency  to  morbidness  of  the  mental 
functions. 

Now  on  what  does  the  amount  or  degree  of  attention  depend? 
The  amount  of  attention  exerted  in  any  mental  act  depends  on 
two  chief  conditions :  (a)  the  quantity  of  nervous  energy  dispos- 
able at  the  time;  (b)  the  strength  of  the  stimulus  whose  function 
it  is  to  rouse  the  attention.  The  first  condition  is  directly  de- 
pendent upon  the  state  of  bodily  health,  the  amount  and  kind  of 
nourishment  the  person  receives,  the  time  of  day,  etc.  Thus,  a 
healthy,  vigorous  child,  in  the  early  hours  of  the  day  has  a  sur- 
plus of  energy  which  manifests  itself  in  an  exaggerated  degree  of 
attention  to  the  smallest,  and  ordinarily  most  unattractive,  of 
objects.  On  the  other  hand,  a  tired,  weak,  poorly-nourished 
child  requires  a  more  potent  stimulus  to  arouse  him  into  mental 
activity. 

The  nature  of  the  process  of  attention  has  been  considerably 
cleared  up  by  recent  experiments.  For  a  long  time  it  has  .been 
disputed  as  to  how  many  impressions  can  be  attended  to  at  once. 
Of  course,  in  a  general  way  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  num- 
ber of  things  to  which  we  can  attend  is  altogether  indefinite,  de- 
pending on  the  power  of  the  individual  intellect  and  also  on  what 
the  things  are.  The  old-time  philosophers  maintained  that  the 
"  unity  of  the  soul "  precluded  the  presence  of  more  than  one  ob- 
jective fact  or  thought  at  a  time.  This  artificial  view  was  given 
to  us  in  childhood  by  our  teachers,  who  said  it  was  absolutely 
impossible  to  do  two  things  at  once  — a  dictum,  the  falsity  of 
which  was  demonstrated  by  the  boys  at  recess,  who  would  "rat- 
tle the  bones  "  with  the  hand  and  at  the  same  time  sing  a  song  of 
a  very  different  measure.  I  once  saw  a  u  freak  "  on  exhibition  at  a 
State  Fair,  who  could  write  a  selection  of  German  poetry  with  his 
right  hand  and  at  the  same  time  write  a  prose  selection  with  his 
left  — not  letting  his"left  hand  know  what  the  right  hand  doeth." 
M.  Paulhan  has  experimented  quite  extensively  on  the  matter  of 


238  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

divided  attention  by  declaiming  one  poem  aloud  while  he  re- 
peated a  different  one  mentally,  or  by  writing  one  sentence  while 
uttering  another,  or  by  calculating  certain  sums  on  paper  while 
teciting  poetry.  Paulhan  compared  the  time  occupied  by  any 
two  operations  done  simultaneously  and  separately,  and  found 
that  there  was  a  considerable  gain  of  time  when  done  simultane- 
ously. He  himself  says :  "  I  write  the  first  four  verses  of  Athalie 
whilst  reciting  eleven  of  Musset.  The  whole  performance  occu- 
pies 40  seconds.  But  reciting  alone  takes  22  and  writing  alone 
takes  31,  so  that  there  is  a  difference  of  13  seconds  in  favor  of  the 
simultaneous  operations.  ...  I  multiply  421, 312, 212  by  2 ; 
the  operation  takes  6  seconds;  the  recitation  of  four  verses 
also  takes  6  seconds.  But  the  two  operations  done  at  once  take 
only  6  seconds,  so  that  there  is  no  loss  of  time  from  combining 
them." 

Recent  experiments  show  that  when  a  number  of  small  objects, 
as  lines  or  letters,  are  placed  sufficiently  close  together  to  be  seen 
simultaneously,  and  presented  to  the  eye  just  long  enough  for 
the  excitation  of  the  retina  (about  T-J^  of  a  second),  four,  five,  or 
even  six  objects  can  be  grasped  simultaneously  by  the  attention. 
Professor  Jevons,  by  counting  instantaneously  beans  thrown 
into  a  box,  found  that  the  number  6  was  guessed  correctly  120 
times  out  of  147;  5  correctly  102  times  out  of  107;  4  and  3  al- 
ways right.  Professor  Cattell  made  a  similar  series  of  experi- 
ments in  a  more  thorough-going  and  precise  way.  Cards  were 
ruled  with  short  lines,  varying  in  number  from  four  to  fifteen,  and 
exposed  to  the  eye  for  y-^  of  a  second.  When  the  number  of  lines 
exposed  was  but  four  or  five,  as  a  rule  no  mistakes  were  made.  For 
higher  numbers  the  tendency  was  to  under  rather  than  over  esti- 
mate. Similar  experiments  tried  with  letters  and  figures  gave  the 
same  result.  I  have  often  found  the  same  thing  in  a  much  cruder 
experiment.  When  asking  a  class  to  glance  just  for  an  instant 
at  a  chandelier,  they  would  never  fail  to  perceive  the  exact  num- 
ber of  gas  jets  composing  the  chandelier,  when  there  were  six  or 
less  in  number.  My  lecture  room  is  partitioned  on  the  one  side 
by  a  series  of  glass  window  panes  and  oak  panels.  There  are 


ATTENTION.  239 

thirty-five  of  these  panes  of  glass,  but  on  asking  my  students 
after  a  momentary  glance,  the  estimate  was  from  25  to  32. 

In  the  case  of  such  related  objects,  of  course  more  than  one  can 
be  attended  to  at  the  same  time.  In  the  less  automatic  processes 
not  more  than  one  ought  be  attended  to  at  once,  for  it  cannot  be 
done  advantageously,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Julius  Caesar  is  said 
to  have  dictated  four  letters  while  he  himself  wrote  a  fifth,  for  in 
the  more  complicated  mental  acts  there  must  of  necessity  be  a 
great  deal  of  oscillation  from  one  object  to  another,  and  con- 
sequently no  gain  of  time. 

We  now  come  to  consider  the  relation  of  interest  to  attention. 
We  know  that  a  prolonged  monotonous  impression  fails  to  hold 
the  attention.  The  constant  whirl  of  the  mill's  machinery  soon 
ceases  to  be  heard  by  the  one  who  works  in  the  mill  or  lives  near  it. 
Such  a  prolonged  monotonous  impression  has  little  or  no  effect, 
because  it  soon  loses  its  novelty  and  ceases  to  enlist  the  attention. 
Every  teacher  knows  that  if  he  frequently  or  continually  addresses 
his  pupils  in  loud  tones,  he  misses  the  advantage  of  occasionally 
raising  his  voice.  I  noticed  quite  frequently,  when  visiting  the 
Volksschule  in  Germany,  that  they  were  noisier  than  our  own 
schools  simply  because  the  teacher  habitually  spoke  in  the  tone 
used  to  command  a  brigade  of  soldiers ;  and  I  also  noticed  that 
the  children  paid  no  heed  to  ordinary  suggestions,  but  each  de- 
sire of  the  teacher  had  to  be  expressed  in  the  form  of  a  command, 
and  the  child  did  not  seem  to  think  he  was  expected  to  obey  un- 
less the  teacher  came  upon  him  like  an  avalanche. 

We  know  that  a  sudden  change  of  impressions,  such  as  is  pro- 
duced by  the  unexpected  firing  of  a  gun,  the  flash  of  lightning,  or 
brilliant  flowers  growing  from  cold,  gray  granite  on  the  moun- 
tain side,  acts  as  a  powerful  excitant  on  the  attentive  powers. 
Novelty  plays  an  important  part  with  reference  to  our  acts  of 
attention.  The  enterprising  merchant  realizes  this  when  he  prints 
his  advertisement  in  "flaming  colors,"  or  heads  it  with  start- 
ling expressions.  Something  new  attracts  the  attention  because 
it  stands  in  contrast  to  our  ordinary  run  of  experience.  The 
child,  like  ourselves,  will  attend  only  to  what  interests  him.  This 


240  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

feeling  of  interest  (which  attracts  and  holds  the  attention)  may 
arise  in  various  ways. 

(1)  Interest  is  aroused  when  the  object  itself  or  the  thought 
presented  is  beautiful  or  attractive,  i.  e.,  gives  pleasure  in  the 
very  act  of  attending  to  it.  Thus  the  babe  will  keep  his  eyes  fixed 
for  a  considerable  time  on  a  bright  ball,  or  will  listen  attentively 
to  a  bell,  because  of  the  pleasurable  effect  produced.    Whoever 
heard  of  a  boy  going  to  sleep  at  a  circus  ?    The  same  boy  who 
stares  into  vacancy  when  the  teacher  holds  forth  on  "common 
fractions"  will  be  all  eyes  and  ears  when  attending  a  "Christmas 
Tree"  entertainment.     The  boy  who  can  scarcely  be  induced  to 
carry  an  armful  of  wood  or  bucket  of  coal  for  his  mother,  gets  up 
before  daylight  to  get  an  opportunity  to  carry  water  for  the  ele- 
phant of  the  traveling  show.    Pleasure  is  really  the  mainspring 
of  nearly  all  our  actions. 

(2)  Another  productive  source  of  interest  is  the  connection  or 
relation  that  the  thing  under  consideration  bears  to  previous 
pleasant  or  painful  experiences.    The  child  who  cannot  subtract 
17  from  31  in  the  abstract,  can  do  so  readily  if  you  ask  him  to 
perform  the  operation  with  reference  to  something  concrete,  for 
example,  marbles.    The  thought  of  a  game  of  marbles  lends  inter- 
est to  the  usually  dry  and  tedious  lesson  in  arithmetic.  A  child  will 
always  listen  to  whatever  is  related  to  its  own  familiar  pleasures 
and  amusements.  Likewise,  the  attention  is  immediately  enlisted 
in  all  those  acts  that  are  connected  with  the  child's  painful  ex- 
periences.   States  of  fear,  suffering  and  pain  are  emphatically 
items  of  his  experience  and  all  ideas  that  can  be  conceived  as  as- 
sociates with  them ,  immediately  elicit  the  most  profound  interest. 
The  child  will  listen  to  a  pitiful  tale  of  a  boy  lost  in  the  woods, 
pursued  by  bears,  etc.,  until  your  story  makes  him  weep.    But 
in  spite  of  the  pain  the  story  gives  him,  he  insists  on  having  it 
told  over  and  over  again.    Every  painful  and  pleasurable  experi- 
ence that  comes  to  the  child  serves  to  rivet  his  attention  upon 
all  ideas,  thoughts  and  objects  in  any  way  related  to  that  experi- 
ence, and  gives  birth  to  what  is  known  in  practical  life  as  interest. 

(3)  Interest  of  the  more  intellectual  sort  arises  out  of  what  is 


ATTENTION.  241 

commonly  termed  curiosity.  The  child's  attention  is  attracted 
by  what  is  new,  strange  and  mysterious.  If  he  see  a  full-grown 
cucumber  in  a  bottle  whose  opening  at  the  neck  is  but  a  quarter 
of  an  inch  in  diameter,  he  at  once  is  curious  to  know  how  it  ever 
got  into  the  bottle.  If  he  see  a  light  extinguished  when  lowered 
into  a  jar  of  carbonic  dioxide,  he  wants  to  know  the  cause.  This 
makes  it  incumbent  upon  the  teacher  to  lay  the  facts  to  be  ac- 
quired by  the  child,  before  him  in  such  a  way  that  he  may  discover 
some  of  them  for  himself.  That  is,  do  not  tell  the  child  every- 
thing, but  let  his  curiosity  be  aroused,  his  interest  elicited,  and 
he  will  discover  certain  new  facts  for  himself,  and  they  will  stick 
to  him  better  than  all  you  could  tell  him. 

(4)  Another  secret  of  interest,  perhaps  its  greatest  and  most 
fruitful  source,  is  in  adaptation.  The  sled,  blocks,  dolls,  toy 
watches  and  games  of  childhood  amuse  the  child  because  they 
are  just  suited  to  his  stage  of  development,  and  make  certain 
demands  on  his  powers  stimulating  him  to  exercise  them.  The 
teacher,  if  he  expects  to  interest  the  pupils,  must  place  before 
them  tasks  that  they  are  able  to  perform  and  lessons  that  they  can 
easily  comprehend,  in  order  that  their  powers  may  be  strength- 
ened for  greater  achievements  when  there  are  "more  worlds  to 
conquer."  So  it  behooves  the  teacher  to  continually  study  the 
child's  mind,  to  learn  its  contents  and  "take  stock  "  of  its  ideas. 
Unless  we  know  our  pupils  thoroughly  we  can  never  perfectly 
adapt  our  teaching  to  them. 

Again,  we  can  help  our  pupils  in  becoming  interested  and  main- 
taining their  interest,  thus  developing  their  powers  of  concentra- 
tion, if  we  judiciously  arrange  our  daily  programs  of  study  and 
recitations.  You  may  use  your  fingers  in  manipulating  the  keys 
of  a  typewriter  until  they  are  painfully  tired ;  you  may  employ 
your  eyes  in  reading  fine  print  until  they  ache,  but  at  the  same  time 
you  may  be  able  to  walk  without  any  sense  of  fatigue.  In  like 
manner  certain  of  the  intellectual  powers  may  be  engaged  in  the 
exercise  of  their  functions  until  they  are  fatigued,  while  the  rest 
remain  comparatively  fresh  and  vigorous.  Now  we  know  that 
change  in  work,  either  with  reference  to  bodily  or  mental  activi- 

L.  P.-16 


242  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ties,  is  refreshing.  This  should  be  borne  in  mind  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  our  programs.  History  and  Geography  both  tax  the 
memory  severely.  Hence  neither  should  follow  the  other,  and  so 
on  with  other  subjects.  Greatest  skill  and  painstaking  care  are 
necessary  that  the  best  order  of  studies  may  be  determined. 

Furthermore,  no  compulsion  of  teacher  has  ever  succeeded  in 
making  a  child's  mind  embrace  an  uninteresting  subject.  You 
cannot  make  the  child  concentrate  his  attention.  The  best  you 
can  do  is  to  sway  his  attention  by  the  leverage  of  interesting 
features,  which  may  be  made  to  appear  in  connection  with 
the  subject  you  desire  to  present  to  his  mind  for  assimilation. 
Attention  cannot  possibly  be  removed  from  the  sway  of  interest. 
It  is,  in  a  sense,  unfortunate  that  many  subjects  do  not  disclose 
attractiveness  on  the  surface,  but  only  after  they  have  been  more 
closely  examined  and  investigated. 

Attention  is  therefore  the  great  conditioning  factor  in  our 
intellectual  life.  All  kinds  of  acquisition  depend,  both  with  ref- 
erence to  its  rapidity  and  the  permanence  of  the  results,  on  the 
energy  of  the  attention  brought  to  bear,  and  it  is  a  well-authenti- 
cated fact  and  a  proverbial  statement,  that  one  of  the  distin- 
guishing characteristics  of  great  productive  intellect  is  an  ex- 
ceptional power  of  mental  concentration.  The  power  of  intense 
and  prolonged  concentration  and  of  resistance  to  all  distrac- 
tion, is  one  of  the  highest  displays  of  intellectual  and  will  force. 
In  fact,  all  great  intellectual  achievement  of  necessity  involves 
energy  of  will. 

The  importance  of  the  power  of  voluntary  attention  in  the 
economy  of  the  mind's  life  and  activity  behooves  us  to  make  pos- 
sible the  careful  development  of  it  in  the  ordinary  channels  of 
education.  It  is  certain  that  this  is  exceedingly  desirable.  In  a 
later  chapter  w.e  take  this  matter  up  in  a  more  detailed  manner. 
But  we  can  here  call  attention  to  one  or  two  general  considera- 
tions. 

(1)  The  aim  should  be  to  train  the  will  to  perfect  concentra- 
tion and  control  of  the  thoughts.  The  power  of  sustained  atten- 
tion increases  with  the  ability  to  resist  and  overcome  distraction. 


ATTENTION.  243 

To  concentrate  the  mind  is  to  fix  it  persistently  upon  an  object, 
and  so  intently  that  all  irrelevant  objects  are  excluded. 

(2)  It  should  be  the  aim  of  educational  methods  to  develop 
a  sufficient  diversity  of  intellectual  interest  so  as  to  secure  a  flex- 
ibility and  readiness  of  adjustment  when  various  objects  are 
brought  under  consideration.  This  latter  capacity  alone  makes 
possible  a  wide  culture  and  liberal  education,  which  are  not  only 
ornamental  and  beneficial  as  accomplishments,  but  are  also  con- 
ducive to  the  best  mental  health. 

Finally,  voluntary  attention,  like  all  our  voluntary  acts,  may 
be  perfected  in  the  form  of  habits.  You  remember  we  mentioned 
the  point  in  the  preceding  chapter  that  habits  contribute  to  the 
facility  with  which  an  act  may  be  performed.  The  first  manifesta- 
tions of  voluntary  concentration  come  as  a  result  of  sheer  will 
force  and  mental  effort.  Very  soon  after  many  such  repeated 
will-efforts,a  habit  of  attention  makes  its  appearance  in  the  form 
of  a  readiness  to  attend  when  certain  conditions  are  present. 
Later  on,  this  assumes  the  character  of  a  more  permanent  atti- 
tude of  attentiveness  which  marks  off  the  true  observer  and  stu- 
dent from  the  riff-raff  of  mankind. 


LESSON  XIX. 

THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS. 

IF  you  think  about  anything  at  all,  even  for  a  moment,  you 
find  yourself  immediately  after,  thinking  about  something  else 
connected  with  it.  Think  about  your  childhood  home  and  you 
may  think  of  the  house  itself,  its  location,  your  parents,  your 
child  playmates,  the  old-time  games  of  "  leap-frog,"  "town  ball," 
or  "prisoner's  base,"  the  favorite  fruit  trees,  the  trout  brook  or 
the  hill,  down  which  like  lazy  Ned  we  used  to  coast  upon  the  "fine 
new  sled  and  beat  the  other  boys."  Some  or  all  of  these  thoughts 
may  follow  each  other  in  quick  succession.  Think  of  Chicago  and 
you  may  think  of  the  World's  Fair,  of  how  tired  you  became  while 
sight-seeing,  of  Midway  Plaisance,  of  Cairo  Street,  the  Ferris 
wheel,  and  this,  because  of  its  massiveness  and  representation 
of  engineering  skill,  may  make  you  think  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge, 
and  then  of  the  man  who  committed  suicide  by  jumping  from 
the  bridge  to  the  East  Eiver  below.  Thus  you  see,  each  mental 
event,  each  thought,  each  idea  tends  to  suggest  another  men- 
tal event,  thought  or  idea.  Dr.  Hickok  expresses  the  whole 
matter  in  his  own  admirable  way  when  he  says,  "  The  representa- 
tives of  former  objects  of  thought,  when  they  have  fallen,  as  it 
were,  into  memory,  do  not  lie  in  this  common  receptacle  sepa- 
rately. They  are  as  clusters  on  the  vine,  attached  one  to  another 
by  some  law  of  connection  peculiar  to  the  case,  and  which  has 
its  general  determination  for  all  minds,  and  its  particular  modifi- 
cations for  some  minds.  When  one  is  called  up  in  recollection  it 
does  not,  therefore,  come  up  singly,  but  brings  the  whole  cluster 
along  with  it."  This  fact,  namely:  that  thinking  of  anything 
leads  us  to  think  of  something  else,  is  called  the  association  of 
ideas.  Just  a  moment  ago  I  addressed  a  letter  to  a  friend. 
(244) 


THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS.  245 

While  writing  the  superscription  I  happened  to  think  of  an  ad- 
dressed envelope  I  once  saw  at  the  Dead  Letter  Office.  The 
letter  was  addressed  to  a  party  in  "  Alabama,  Connecticut."  Of 
course  there  is  no  such  town  in  Connecticut.  But  the  postal 
authorities  with  their  far-seeing  skill,  acquired  by  long  experience, 
decided  to  send  the  letter  to  Birmingham,  Connecticut,  which  was 
done  and  resulted  in  reaching  the  person  for  whom  the  letter  was 
intended.  Now  how  did  such  a  mistake  occur?  Simply  because 
of  the  association  of  ideas  which  took  place  in  the  mind  of  the 
writer  as  he  addressed  the  letter.  In  all  probability  when  think- 
ing of  Birmingham,  Connecticut,  the  city  of  the  same  name  in 
Alabama  (Birmingham),  came  to  his  mind,  and  thinking  intently 
of  the  fact  that  there  existed  a  Birmingham  in  Alabama,  his 
hand  unbidden,  wrote  the  word  "  Alabama"  in  place  of  the 
word  "  Birmingham." 

Now  it  must  be  remembered  that  there  are  certain  rules  or  laws 
governing  association  of  ideas  just  as  there  are  laws  governing 
any  other  of  the  mental  activities.  In  all  of  its  forms  of  function- 
ing— be  it  in  acts  of  memory,  sensation,  imagination,  fancy  or 
anything  else— in  every  form  of  its  activity,  the  mind  acts  ac- 
cording to  certain  laws  of  its  own. 

If  you  follow  the  stream  of  your  thoughts  for  a  single  hour, 
you  readily  discover  that  there  are  very  different  kinds  of  con- 
nection or  relationship  between  the  ideas  recalled  and  the 
thoughts  by  which  they  are  recalled.  If  you  think  of  a  stream,  it 
may  impel  you  to  think  of  a  row  you  took  there  one  moonlight 
night,  or  of  the  river  on  which  you  used  to  skate.  The  thought 
of  the  river  makes  you  think  of  the  rowing  experience  because 
when  rowing  you  thought  of  the  river.  In  other  words,  the 
thought  of  the  river  and  the  thought  of  boating  were  in  your 
mind  at  the  same  time.  On  the  other  hand,  the  little  white  house 
with  green  shutters  that  I  see  on  yonder  hill  makes  me  think  of 
my  boyhood  home,  not  because  the  two  houses  — the  house  I  see 
now  and  the  house  I  remember  —  were  ever  presented  to  my  mind 
at  the  same  time,  but  because  they  are  like  each  other.  Again,  if  I 
were  stranded  on  a  desert  isle  and  should  see  lying  among  the 


246  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

wreckage  strewn  along  its  coasts,  a  single  piano  key,  I  would  be  im- 
pelled to  think  of  a  piano,  because  a  part  always  makes  one  think 
of  the  whole  to  which  it  belongs.  Take  still  another  instance. 
Suppose  I  am  looking  at  a  new  piece  of  machinery — an  achieve- 
ment of  engineering  skill  —  a  gigantic  printing-press,  for  example. 
As  I  study  the  parts  of  the  interesting  mechanism  in  their  rela- 
tion to  each  other  I  begin  to  think  of  what  it  can  do — how  it  will 
print,  fold  and  paste.  I  stand  beside  the  monstrous  Krupp  gun 
and  I  think  of  all  the  devastation  and  bloody  work  it  can  per- 
form. This  shows  that  the  perception  of  a  cause  of  any  kind 
always  leads  one  to  think  of  the  effect  it  can  bring  about. 

Thus  we  might  go  on  and  to  the  four  above  classes  of  relations- 
contiguity  in  time  or  space,  resemblance  or  similarity,  relation  of 
whole  to  part  and  of  cause  to  effect  — add  an  indefinite  number.  If 
I  see  in  the  crowd  of  passers-by  a  face  that  looks  like  the  face  of 
an  absent  friend, it  brings  that  friend  to  mind.  But  just  as  truly 
objects  that  are  unlike  recall  each  other.  This  is  especially  true  of 
objects  that  can  be  contrasted.  Thus  cold  makes  us  think  of  heat, 
bitter  makes  us  think  of  sweet,  and  sweet  makes  us  think  of  bitter; 
darkness  makes  us  think  of  light,  and  light  makes  us  think  of 
darkness.  The  various  rules  of  association  of  ideas  intimated 
above  — contiguity,  similarity  and  the  like— are  not  sufficient  be- 
cause they  do  not  account  for  all  the  facts.  The  list  of  catalogued 
relations  which  includes  likeness,  cause  and  effect,  instrument 
and  use,  means  and  end,  part  and  whole,  must  be  indefinitely  ex- 
tended in  order  to  explain  all  cases  of  association  of  ideas.  Under 
which  class  of  relations  would  you  subsume  the  following  ?  Mad 
King  Lear  makes  an  endeavor  to  comfort  the  blind  Duke  of 
Gloucester  in  his  misfortunes ;  comfort  suggests  to  him  a  ser- 
mon in  the  delivery  of  which,  after  the  manner  of  the  old-time 
Puritan,  he  holds  his  hat  in  his  hand ;  the  felt  of  the  hat  makes 
him  think  of  a  possible  stratagem  in  war,  namely,  to  shoe  the 
horses  with  felt  so  as  to  come  upon  the  enemy  noiselessly.  You 
see  at  once  that  here  is  a  chain  of  associations  that  normally 
and  naturally  arose,  but  which  cannot  be  explained  by  mere 
reference  to  certain  classes  of  relations.  Now  we  must  have  a 


THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS.  247 

law  more  general,  capable  of  wider  application,  and  more  far- 
reaching. 

Now  I  would  not  for  a  moment  have  you  think  that  the  "laws 
of  association,"  which  are  based  upon  classes  of  relations,  are  of 
no  value.  Quite  the  contrary  is  the  case.  I  do  think  they  are  of 
much  value  in  helping  us  to  classify  the  forms  or  modes  under 
which  the  connection  between  thoughts  or  association  of  ideas 
really  takes  place.  For  example,  take  the  relation  known  as  Con- 
tiguity of  Place.  If  when  on  a  railroad  journey  a  terrible  acci- 
•  dent  occurs  at  a  certain  bridge,  e.  g.,  the  Ash  tabula  wreck,  I  am 
sure  ever  after  to  think  of  the  accident  when  subsequently  cross- 
ing that  particular  bridge.  In  the  same  way  associations  cluster 
round  certain  localities  and  make  them  peculiarly  interesting; 
things  not  at  all  interesting  in  them  selves  may  become  thoroughly 
interesting  on  account  of  their  associations.  The  "  Washington 
Elm"  at  Cambridge  is  anything  but  a  beautiful  tree,  yet  it  is  vis- 
ited by  thousands  every  year  because  of  a  certain  event  that 
transpired  there  over  a  century  ago.  So  the  field  of  Waterloo  is 
visited  every  year  by  multitudes  who  associate  with  it  one  of  the 
epoch-making  events  of  modern  history.  We  cut  a  cane  from  the 
Gettysburg  battlefield,  pick  up  a  battered  bullet  on  Lookout 
Mountain,  cherish  a  fragment  of  stone  from  the  streets  of  Jerusa- 
lem and  bring  a  bottle  of  water  from  the  river  Jordan,  because 
these  places  are  associated  with  events  of  vivid  interest  to  us. 
Likewise  the  morbid  interest  which  leads  one  to  carry  away  and 
cherish  a  blood-stained  splinter  from  a  railroad  wreck,  or  treasure 
a  piece  of  hangman's  rope,  can  only  be  explained  on  the  same 
ground  as  the  associations  instanced  above — associations  of 
events  with  things  and  places— they  are  associations  of  Con- 
tiguity of  Place.  So  we  might  go  on  and  illustrate  any  of  these 
so-called  laws  of  association  — contrast,  resemblance,  contiguity 
in  time,  etc.;  but  at  most  they  could  only  be  regarded  as  princi- 
ples of  classification  rather  than  as  well-founded  explanatory 
laws.  At  most,  as  laws,  they  are  only  of  secondary  value.  Three, 
six,  ten,  a  hundred  "classes  of  relation"  would  not  be  sufficient 
to  account  for  all  the  phenomena  of  association.  Mere  similarity 


248 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


or  resemblance  between  objects  has  no  causal  power  to  carry  us 
from  one  to  the  other.  It  is  quite  unintelligible  how  some  writers 
can  talk  of  similarity,  contrast,  etc.,  as  if  these  mere  resemblances 
or  oppositions  could  be  an  efficient  cause  in  the  reproduction  of 
thought  processes.  Besides,  no  such  relation  is  ever  observed 
until  after  the  association  has  really  taken  place.  These  rela- 
tions are  effects  of  the  association  rather  than  causes. 

In  seeking  to  explain  the  large  class  of  facts  grouped  under  the 
phrase  "  association  of  ideas,"  it  must  be  remembered  first  of  all 
that  this  association  or  connection  is  not  between  ideas  but  be- 
tween things.  Ideas  are  not  entities  which  can  adhere,  cohere  or 
agglutinate.  The  Herbartian  school  of  thinkers  would  have  us 


FIGURE  48. 

believe  that  there  is  some  inherent  force  in  the  ideas  themselves 
by  means  of  which  one  idea  could  attract  another  idea.  All  men- 
tal activities  Herbart  accounts  for  on  the  basis  of  the  actions 
and  reactions  of  ideas.  Any  such  view  is  certainly  in  error. 

The  real  principle  that  explains  all  the  phenomena  of  associa- 
tion is  this  —  the  mind  tends  to  act  again  in  the  manner  it  has 
acted  before.  Like  all  mental  activities  the  process  of  association 
has  a  physical  or  cerebral  basis.  It  is  practically  a  cerebral  law. 
Professor  James  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  "there  is  no  other 
elementary  causal  law  of  association  than  the  law  of  neural 
habit."  We  know  with  complete  certainty  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  an  isolated  mental  experience  or  brain  process.  The 
successive  brain  processes  overlap  each  other. 


THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS.  249 

Let  the  horizontal  line  run  in  Fig.  48  represent  the  line  of  time, 
and  let  the  curves  beginning  at  a,  b  and  c  respectively,  represent 
the  neural  processes  correlated  with  certain  thoughts  or  states  of 
mind.  Each  process  of  course  occupies  a  certain  time  during 
which  its  intensity  changes  —  beginning  feebly,  it  grows  in  intens- 
ity until  it  culminates  and  then  it  becomes  weaker  until  it  fades 
into  nothingness.  But  before  the  process  a  has  died,  the  process 
c  has  already  begun,  while  b  is  culminating.  So  it  is  in  all  brain 
activity— one  process  always  induces  another  brain  process  in 
a  contiguous  or  connected  center.  This  is  provided  for  in  the 
very  structure  of  the  cerebral  cortex  itself.  I  refer  to  the  » <  asso- 
ciation fibers  "  of  the  brain.  These  fibers  run  from  one  cortical 
center  to  another,  connecting  the  different  areas  on  the  surface 
of  the  brain.  These  fibers  run  in  all  directions  and  dive  down  un- 
der the  fissures,  thereby  establishing  bonds  of  connection  between 
areas  on  the  cortex  that  would  otherwise  be  entirely  separate  or 
isolated  from  one  another. 

Now  when  two  elementary  brain  processes  have  been  active 
together  in  previous  experiences  —  have  overlapped  or  acted  in 
immediate  succession  —  one  of  them  recurring  tends  to  arouse  the 
other.  But  it  is  found  in  actual  experience  that  every  brain  pro- 
cess is  linked  with  a  host  of  others.  The  question  now  arises 
which  one  of  these  secondary  processes  should  be  evoked  when 
the  elementary  process  recurs.  How  and  by  what  is  the  course 
of  association  really  brought  about?  What  determines  which 
brain  process  shall  be  aroused  when  the  elementary  process 
occurs  again  ? 

The  course  of  the  association  is  determined  by  no  less  than 
three  factors :  (1 )  The  frequency  with  which  each  of  the  vari- 
ous processes  may  have  acted  in  connection  with  the  ele- 
mentary process ;  (2)  the  strength  of  each  of  such  associated 
processes;  and  (3)  the  presence  or  absence  of  certain  possible 
rival  processes.  In  the  old-time  text-books  on  Psychology  the 
endeavor  was  made  to  account  for  the  same  thing  by  referring 
to  the  vividness  of  the  original  impression,  to  the  recency  of  its 
occurrence,  and  to  the  frequency  of  repetition.  This  is  the  same 


250  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

as  saying  that  whatever  tends  to  fix  the  attention  will  affect  the 
order  and  manner  of  association  in  re-presenting  certain  orig- 
inal impressions  to  consciousness.  This  is  well  and  good,  but 
hazy  and  indefinite.  We  prefer  to  explain  the  trend  of  associa- 
tion on  the  basis  of  the  three  cerebral  or  neurological  conditions 
enumerated  above.  Take,  for  example,  some  of  our  seemingly 
erratic  associations.  I  see  a  certain  kind  of  bench  or  settee  in  my 
recitation  room.  A  moment  after  I  find  myself  thinking  of 
Ouster's  massacre.  By  what  processes  I  reached  the  thought 
of  the  bloody  massacre  of  Gen.  Custer  within  a  half  minute  after 
I  saw  the  settee  in  my  recitation  room,  I  never  shall  be  able  to 
conceive.  Certainly  the  steps  were  not  consciously  taken,  but  they 
were  taken  nevertheless.  The  connection  is  more  intimate  and 
consequently  more  readily  discovered  in  the  case  of  the  little  boy 
who,  when  his  father  brought  home  a  puppy,  exclaimed,  "Oh! 
Good !  I  aint  the  baby  now ! "  Or  it  is  even  more  clear  and 
direct  in  this  self-explanatory  association  which  took  place  in  the 
mind  of  my  little  five-year  old  girl  just  this  afternoon.  She  was 
washing  some  little  toy  cups  and  saucers  — her  "  doll  dishes  "  as 
she  called  them  —  and  before  the  operation  was  completed  became 
rather  tired  of  it.  Finally  she  finished  and  with  a  sigh  of  relief 
said,  "Well,  I'm  actually  done.  Amen."  I  asked  her  why  she 
said  "Amen."  She  replied  at  once,  "  I  always  say  amen  when  I 
finish  my  prayers  and  I  guess  dishwashing  is  just  as  hard  as 
saying  prayers." 

You  see  we  must  refer  the  trend  or  course  of  the  stream  of  asso- 
ciated impressions  to  something  more  elementary  than  mere  viv- 
idness, repetition  or  recency  of  these  impressions.  It  seems  that 
the  conditions  can  be  none  other  than  the  neurological  ones 
already  set  forth. 

The  physiological  connection  of  the  various  cortical  centers, 
by  means  of  the  fibers  of  association,  is  then  the  physical  correlate 
or  counterpart  of  the  associated  mental  states.  Objections  are 
sometimes  raised  to  this  view  on  the  basis  that  there  are  not 
enough  nerve  cells  and  fibers  to  render  possible  as  many  combi- 
nations of  the  nervous  elements  as  we  have  ideas.  We  think  this 


THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS.  251 

objection  disappears  when  it  is  remembered  that  there  probably 
are  noless  than  15, 000, 000  nerve-cells  in  every  cubic  inch  of  corti- 
cal matter,  for  the  number  of  combinations  possible  are  practi- 
cally infinite.  The  arousement  of  a  single  impression  in  this  very 
complicated  network  evokes,  therefore,  many  associated  impres- 
sions, some  few  of  which  are  very  clear,  definite  and  strong, 
others  less  so,  while  many  are  vague,  indefinite  and  weak.  That 
there  are  varying  degrees  of  strength  of  revival  of  impressions  is 
a  well-known  fact,  and  one  which  is  provided  for  on  the  basis  of 
the  theory  here  advanced. 

The  impressions  that  are  so  related  and  associated  that  they 
are  recalled  by  each  other,  need  by  no  means  be  within  the  realm 
of  the  same  sense.  In  fact,  the  more  vivid  and  strong  associations 
most  frequently  occur  between  impressions  of  different  senses, 
rather  than  between  impressions  of  the  same  sense.  There  are  as 
many  memories  possible  as  there  are  original  sense  impressions. 
The  speaking  of  the  word  "apple"  in  my  ear  may  evoke  no  less 
than  a  dozen  memories  or  revived  impressions  of  color,  size  and 
shape,  the  taste  impression,  the  smell  or  flavor,  the  smoothness 
and  hardness  of  its  surface,  the  appearance  of  the  word  when 
written  or  printed,  the  muscular  sensations  experienced  in  speak- 
ing the  word  —  all  of  these  may  be  called  out,  of  course  with 
different  degrees  of  vividness  and  clearness.  Such  associations 
must  of  necessity,  and  do  readily  admit  of  the  neurological  or 
physiological  explanation.  On  no  other  basis  can  they  be 
explained. 

All  learning  or  acquisition  of  knowledge  illustrates  the  law  of 
association.  For  example,  in  learning  about  the  history  of  his 
own  country  or  the  geography  of  distant  countries,  the  pupil  has 
to  depend  largely  upon  associations  of  time  and  place  in  order 
to  remember  certain  characteristics.  In  the  same  way  he  turns 
to  account  his  observations  gained  by  actual  contact  in  his  daily 
rounds  of  play.  The  ball  he  sees  in  the  window  of  the  novelty 
store  is  an  object  of  intense  interest  to  him  simply  because  there 
is  associated  with  it  a  host  of  vivid  impressions  of  former  en- 
joyment. Whoever  heard  of  a  boy  forgetting  the  name  of  a  toy 


252  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

or  game?  Why  should  he  remember  such  things  any  better 
than  he  remembers  the  name  of  the  capital  of  a  distant  state, 
the  products  of  a  foreign  country,  or  a  rule  or  formula  in 
mathematics?  Simply  because  the  associated  impressions  in 
the  primary  perceptions  are  more  vivid,  clear  and  definite 
and  at  the  same  time  more  numerous.  The  point  is,  then, 
that  the  teacher  should  impress  each  new  fact  upon  the  mind  of 
the  pupil  by  means  of  certain,  clear,  well-defined,  associated  facts 
and  relations.  To  illustrate  what  I  mean,  take  this  example 
from  Lange's  "Apperception."  "  If  the  teacher  is  to  explain  the 
distance  of  the  sun  from  the  earth,  let  him  ask :  ...  'If  any 
one  there  in  the  sun  fired  off  a  cannon  straight  at  you,  what  would 
you  do  ? '  '  Get  out  of  the  way,'  would  be  the  answer.  < No  need 
of  that/  the  teacher  might  reply.  *  You  may  quietly  go  to  sleep 
in  your  room,  and  get  up  again,  you  may  wait  until  your  con- 
firmation day,  you  may  learn  a  trade,  and  grow  as  old  as  I  am— 
then,  only,  will  the  cannon  ball  be  getting  near,  then,  you  may 
jump  to  one  side.  See,  so  great  is  the  sun's  distance ! ' ' 

Perhaps  verbal  associations  or  word-names,  whether  they  be 
names  of  objects,  persons  or  places,  are  the  most  potent  factors 
in  reviving  sense  impressions.  Indeed,  the  most  important  as- 
sociations are  those  of  words.  We  habitually  recall  our  impres- 
sions by  aid  of  verbal  signs.  The  name  of  an  object  is,  in  itself, 
a  very  bundle  of  associated  sense-impressions.  While  the  name 
is  a  mere  label  of  an  object,  by  means  of  it  alone  are  we  able  to 
revive  the  impressions  that  self-same  object  has  made  upon  our 
sensorium. 

But  associations,  to  be  of  value,  must  be  well  selected ;  the  more 
significant  ones  must  be  emphasized  in  our  first  perception  so 
that  they  alone  will  recur  with  vividness.  It  is  by  no  means 
the  mark  of  a  strong  mind  to  be  able  to  revive  every  one  of  the 
impressions  originally  associated  in  perception.  The  strong  in- 
dividual mind  will  select  those  associates  that  are  of  greatest  value 
for  his  purpose  and  work,  and  these  are  the  ones  that  come  up  in 
his  re-presentative  consciousness  with  the  greatest  clearness  and 
intensity.  In  those  weaker  minds,  marked  by  mechanical  modes 


TEE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS.  253 

of  activity  rather  tli an  by  real  individual  thinking,  discrimination 
among  related  impressions  does  not  take  place  to  any  extent. 
All  impressions  seem  to  such  an  one  to  be  of  like  importance, 
and  the  person  is  a  machine  grinding  out  the  bundle  of  associa- 
tions as  originally  perceived,  just  as  a  graphophoneor  music-box 
would  do  if  properly  adjusted.  Those  inveterate  gossips  who  will 
omit  no  detail,  however  petty,  in  the  tales  they  recount — those 
good,  motherly  old  souls  who  desire  to  prescribe  for  our  aches 
and  ills,  who  at  the  same  time  relate  how  so  and  so  was  cured  by 
the  self-same  remedy,  giving  the  exact  circumstances  under 
which  the  cure  took  place,  who  remember  dates  by  associating 
the  event  with  the  time  a  certain  child  in  the  neighborhood  cut 
its  teeth,  and  so  on  —  these  represent  what  I  have  in  mind.  Not 
long  ago  I  read  a  letter  written  by  such  a  person.  The  event 
related  was  itself  of  minor  consequence.  Yet  the  name  of  the 
person  with  whom  the  event  was  associated  was  given  in  full, 
his  parents'  names,  his  own  exact  age,  the  fact  mentioned  that 
he  was  of  the  same  age  as  his  cousin,  that  he  kept  a  store  and 
sold  calico  at  so  much  a  yard,  etc.  Literature  abounds  with 
just  such  characters.  Read,  for  example,  the  utterances  of  that 
garrulous  Mrs.  Quickly  in  Shakespeare's  Henry  IV.,  or  of  the 
nurse  in  Romeo  and  Juliet ;  or  notice  the  rambling  words  of  Mrs. 
Tulliver  in  George  Eliot's  "Mill  on  the  Floss."  Dickens  makes 
constant  use  of  this  characteristic  in  his  works.  The  following 
words  of  Mrs.  Nickleby  serve  as  a  fair  illustration  of  what  I  have 
in  mind: 

[Speaking  of  her  daughter.]  "  She  always  was  clever,  always, 
from  a  baby.  I  recollect  when  she  was  only  two  years  and  a 
half  old,  that  a  gentleman  who  used  to  visit  very  much  at  our 
house  —  Mr.  Wat/kins,  you  know,  Kate,  my  dear,  that  your  poor 
papa  went  bail  for,  who  afterwards  ran  away  to  the  United  States, 
and  sent  us  a  pair  of  snow-shoes  with  such  an  affectionate  letter, 
that  it  made  your  poor,  dear  father  cry  for  a  week.  You  remem- 
ber the  letter  ?  In  which  he  said  that  he  was  very  sorry  he  couldn't 
repay  the  fifty  pounds  just  then,  because  his  capital  was  all  out 
at  interest,  and  he  was  very  busy  making  his  fortune,  but  that 


254  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

he  didn't  forget  that  you  were  his  god-daughter,  and  he  should 
take  it  very  unkind  if  we  didn't  buy  you  a  silver  coral  and  put  it 
down  to  his  'old  account  ?  Dear  me,  yes,  my  dear ;  how  stupid 
you  are !  and  spoke  so  affectionately  of  the  old  port  wine  that  he 
used  to  drink  a  bottle  and  a  half  of  every  time  he  came.  You 
must  remember,  Kate?  " 

Again,  in  answer  to  an  inquiry  about  her  daughter's  health, 
she  replies:  "She  is  quite  well,  I'm  obliged  to  you,  my  lord. 
Quite  well.  She  wasn't  well  for  some  days  after  that  day  she 
dined  here,  and  I  can't  help  thinking  that  she  caught  cold  in  that 
hackney  coach  coming  home.  Hackney  coaches,  my  lord,  are 
such  nasty  things,  that  it's  almost  better  to  walk  at  any  time, 
for  although  I  believe  a  hackney  coachman  can  be  transported 
for  life  if  he  has  a  broken  window,  still  they  are  so  reckless  that 
they  nearly  all  have  broken  windows.  I  once  had  a  swelled  face 
for  six  weeks,  my  lord,  from  riding  in  a  hackney  coach.  I  think 
it  was  a  hackney  coach,"  said  Mrs.  Nickleby,  reflecting,  "though 
I'm  not  quite  certain  whether  it  wasn't  a  chariot;  at  all  events, 
I  know  it  was  a  dark  green  with  a  very  long  number  beginning 
with  a  nought  and  ending  with  a  nine,  no  — beginning  with  a  nine 
and  ending  with  a  nought,  that  was  it;  and  of  course  the  stamp 
office  people  would  know  at  once  whether  it  was  a  coach  or  a 
chariot,  if  any  inquiries  were  made  there — however  that  was, 
there  it  was  with  a  broken  window  and  there  was  I  for  six  weeks 
with  a  swelled  face— I  think  that  was  the  very  same  hackney 
coach  that  we  found  out  afterwards  had  the  top  open  all  the  time, 
and  we  should  never  even  have  known  it,  if  they  hadn't  charged 
us  a  shilling  an  hour  extra  for  having  it  open,  which  it  seems  is 
the  law,  or  was  then,  and  a  most  shameful  law  it  appears  to  be. 
I  don't  understand  the  subject,  but  I  should  say  the  Corn  Laws 
could  be  nothing  to  that  act  of  Parliament." 

Such  illustrations  as  these,  make  it  patent  to  the  reader  that 
our  faculty  of  association  should  be  selective  in  the  exercise  of  its 
functions.  The  developed  thinker  will  carefully  discriminate 
among  his  impressions  and  the  skillful  teacher  will  emphasize  in 
his  work  of  instruction  certain  phases  of  the  subject— in  other 


THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS.  255 

words,  certain  " associates"  that  will  be  of  future  value  to  his 
pupil  in  the  wisest,  most  economical  exercise  of  his  mental  func- 
tions; for  a  multiplicity  of  paths  of  association  may  prove  a 
hindrance  rather  than  an  aid  or  advantage. 

Before  closing  the  chapter,  we  must  at  least  refer  to  the  rap- 
idity with  which  these  associations  take  place  in  our  minds. 
Reading  is  one  of  the  best  exemplifications  of  the  activity  of  the 
associative  faculty.  With  little  practice  you  will  find  that  you 
can  name  at  least  five  hundred  letters  in  two  minutes  from  a 
printed  page.  In  so  doing  we  associate  certain  impressions  of 
sound  with  certain  visual  impressions  produced  by  the  printed 
characters  on  the  page  before  you.  This  makes  120  less  than  four 
distinct  acts  of  association  in  every  second  that  have  taken  place 
within  your  mind.  Professor  Valentin  tells  us  that  the  reading 
of  a  single  page  of  proof,  containing  2,629  letters,  took  him  two 
minutes  and  32  seconds,  which  shows  that  he  understood  the 
import  of  each  letter  in  less  than  ^g-  of  a  second.  These  simple 
figures  serve  to  indicate  with  what  rapidity  sensation  calls  up  its 
associates.  Professor  CatteU's  experiments  show  that  the  time- 
rate  varies  even  among  the  most  elementary  kinds  of  association. 
For  example,  a  word  was  presented,  the  name  of  a  city,  at  the 
sight  of  which  the  reactor  was  to  announce  the  name  of  the  coun- 
try in  which  it  was  situated;  then  a  month  was  named,  the  re- 
actor to  tell  the  season  to  which  that  month  belonged ;  the  name 
of  an  author  to  call  up  the  language  in  which  he  wrote,  and  also 
the  name  of  a  writer  to  call  up  one  of  his  works.  The  average 
time  for  the  different  processes  was  shown  to  be  as  follows : 

From  city  to  country 0.340  seconds. 

From  month  to  season 0.399  seconds. 

From  author  to  language 0.523  seconds. 

From  author  to  work 0.596  seconds. 

But  this  matter  will  be  more  fully  discussed  in  our  chapter  on 
"The  Time  Relations  of  Mental  Phenomena." 


LESSON  XX. 

MEMORY. 

You  remember  we  discussed  at  considerable  length,  the  sensa- 
tions. They  constitute  the  phenomena  that  take  place  in  presen- 
tative  consciousness.  In  the  last  chapter  we  discussed  the  laws 
and  rules  of  our  mental  associations  which  have  to  do  with  the 
revival  and  recombination  of  certain  original  impressions  of 
sense.  These  are  then  the  phenomena  of  the  re-presentative  fac- 
ulty, and  the  three  phases  or  forms  under  which  this  faculty 
manifests  itself  are  memory,  imagination  and  fantasy.  You  will 
see  in  a  later  chapter  that  there  are  still  higher  and  more  com- 
plicated forms  of  mental  activity  known  as  reasoning,  reflection, 
comparison,  judgment  and  the  like.  The  power  which  manifests 
itself  in  this  highly  complex  manner,  and  through  such  varied 
processes  is  probably  best  known  under  the  name  of  the  thought 
or  rational  faculty. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  on  "Association,"  we  considered  the 
laws  or  conditions  under  which  the  re-presentative  power  mani- 
fests itself.  Having  done  this  we  now  proceed  to  apply  these  ob- 
servations in  a  more  specific  manner.  As  mentioned  above  the 
three  forms,  phases,  or  modes  of  the  mind's  functioning  which 
can  be  attributed  to  the  re-presentative  power  are  memory,  im- 
agination and  fantasy.  For  our  present  purpose  only  the  first 
two  need  to  be  discussed,  because  of  their  wide  significance  and 
their  practical  value.  We  shall  begin  with  memory. 

In  our  discussion  of  the  senses  we  stated  that  all  our  knowl- 
edge of  objects  is  gained  through  sensation.  But  if  we  were  capa- 
ble of  only  "sensing"  objects  we  could  gain  no  lasting  knowledge 
about  anything.  True  knowledge,  even  of  the  simplest  objects, 
is,  as  you  well  know,  not  amomentary  transient  affair;  it  must  be 
an  abiding  possession  perduring  in  some  form  to  be  used  at  any 
(256) 


MEMORY.  257 

time,  whether  the  objects  are  present  or  not.  The  persistency  of 
the  various  impressions  which  objects  make  upon  our  minds 
through  the  several  avenues  of  sense  is  due  to  that  power  of  mind 
usually  called  retentiveness.  This  leads  us 


the  knowledge  of  a  former  mental  state  after  it  has  already 
dropped  out  of  consciousness. 

The  power  of  memory  manifests  itself  under  three  distinct 
steps  or  phases:  (1)  retention;  (2)  reproduction,  and  (3)  recog- 
nition. The  second  and  third  can  be  grouped  together  under  one 
name  —  that  of  "  recall."  Since  these  two  phases  are  so  intimate 
in  their  relations,  and  so  interwoven  in  their  activities,  it  is  no 
doubt  better  to  signify  both  by  the  comprehensive  name  of  recall. 
We  have  then  the  two  factors,  retention  and  recall,  in  every  act 
of  memory.  Memory  presupposes  a  certain  exercise  on  the  part 
of  the  senses.  Memory  images  never  arise  in  consciousness  until 
after  a  more  or  less  developed  sense  knowledge  is  acquired.  For 
the  first  element  which  re-presentative  knowledge  involves  is  the 
revival  in  the  mind  of  an  image  or  copy  of  the  original  event. 
But  more  than  the  mere  revival  or  recurrence  of  sense  impres- 
sions must  take  place  in  order  to  have  an  act  of  real  memory. 
In  truth,in  the  mere  fact  of  recurrence  no  memory  is  necessarily 
involved.  In  a  full  and  complete  act  of  memory  we  must  have, 
(1)  reproduction  of  images  ;  (2)  recognition  of  these  images  as 
copies  of  original  perceptions,  and  (3)  the  assignment  of  such 
recognized  images  to  a  place  in  my  own  private  history—  to  a 
place  in  my  own  past. 

Memory  being  a  form  of  the  re-presentative  power,  both  reten- 
tion and  recall  are  to  be  explained  by  the  same  laws  of  associa- 
tion that  in  the  previous  chapter  were  said  to  explain  all  forms 
of  activity  under  which  the  re-presentative  power  manifests  itself. 
The  materials  are  furnished  to  memory  according  to  the  laws 
of  association.  The  act  of  memory  is  chiefly  an  act  of  recogni- 
tion. That  is,  in  memory  the  individual  recognizes  the  present 
image  before  his  mind  as  the  re-presented  image  of  an  experience 
in  his  own  past.  Association  recalls,  memory  recognizes. 

Your  own  experience  will  testify  to  the  fact  that  recall  as  well 
L.  p.—  17 


258  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

as  retention  can  be  explained  by  association  in  the  broadest 
sense.  Suppose  you  hear  a  familiar  name,  but  cannot,  at  the 
moment,  recall  the  face  of  the  person  who  bears  the  name.  One 
at  a  time  you  settle  the  points.  You  say  he  has  eyes  of  such  a 
color,  nose  of  a  certain  shape,  and  so  on  until  gradually  his  face 
appears  before  you,  first  as  a  cloudlike  form,  then  becoming  more 
clear  and  definite  until  you  have  a  clear-cut  and  distinct  mental 
picture  of  the  person. 

Mill  puts  the  matter  clearly  when  he  says:  "There  is  a  state 
of  mind  familiar  to  all  men  in  which  we  are  said  to  remember.  In 
this  state  it  is  certain  we  have  not  in  the  mind,  the  idea  which 
we  are  trying  to  have  in  it.  How  is  it  then,  that  we  proceed,  in 
the  course  of  our  endeavor,  to  procure  its  introduction  into  the 
mind  ?  If  we  have  not  the  idea  itself,  we  have  certain  ideas  con- 
nected with  it.  We  run  over  those  ideas,  one  after  another,  in 
the  hope  that  some  one  of  them  will  suggest  the  idea  we  are  in 
quest  of;  and  if  any  one  of  them  does,  it  is  always  one  so  con- 
nected with  it  as  to  call  it  up  in  the  way  of  association.  To  illus- 
trate :  I  meet  an  old  acquaintance  whose  name  I  do  not  recall 
and  yet  wish  to  remember.  I  run  over  a  number  of  names  hop- 
ing that  some  of  them  may  be  associated  with  the  idea  of  the  in- 
dividual. I  think  of  all  the  circumstances  amid  which  I  have  seen 
him  occupied  and  if  I  chance  upon  any  idea  with  which  the  name 
is  associated,  I  then,  immediately,  have  the  recollection;  if  not, 
my  pursuit  of  it  is  in  vain." 

Why  do  you  sometimes  tie  a  knot  in  your  handkerchief  or  a 
pink  string  around  your  little  finger,  or  changethe  ring  to  an  un- 
accustomed finger?  You  answer — "  To  remember  by."  In  other 
words,  you  are  seeking  a  clear,  definite  and  strong  association 
by  means  of  which  you  may  recall  a  certain  object. 

Now,  memory  is  not  a  "general"  faculty— there  is  no  memory 
in  general  any  more  than  there  is  motion  in  general,  or  color  in 
general.  Just  as  every  color  is  specific  and  definite,  and  every  mo- 
tion is  motion  at  a  given  rate  and  in  a  given  direction,  so  mem- 
ory is  non-generic.  We  have  just  as  many  memories  as  we  have 
kinds  of  sensation-experiences.  Every  organ  —  every  nerve-cell 


MEMORY.  259 

has  its  own  memory.  There  is  a  "  memory  of  the  eye/'  a  "  mem- 
ory of  the  ear,"  a  "memory  of  the  skin"  (for  touch,  temperature, 
etc.),  a  " memory  of  the  muscles,"  and  so  on  indefinitely. 

It  is  only  in  poetic  figure  that  one  can  speak  of  objects  remem- 
bered as  preserved  in  the  mind,  in  ''memory's  storehouse,"  in 
compartments,  or  pigeon-holes.  Cicero,  Plato,  Schiller  and  others, 
have  compared  the  mind,  in  preserving  memory  images,  to  a 
tablet,  on  which  characters  are  impressed  or  engraved.  Even  the 
keen  Locke  indulges  in  such  inexact  language  as  the  following : 
"  The  pictures  drawn  in  our  minds  are  laid  in  fading  colors,  and  if 
not  sometimes  refreshed,  vanish  and  disappear.  .  .  .  In  some, 
it  [the  mind]  retains  characters  drawn  on  it  like  marble;  in 
others  like  freestone ;  and  in  others,  little  better  than  the  sand. 
.  .  .  We  oftentimes  find  disease  strip  the  mind  of  alf  its  ideas, 
and  the  flames  of  a  fever  in  a  few  days  calcine  all  those  images  to 
dust  and  confusion,  which  seemed  to  be  as  lasting  as  if  graved  in 
marble."  In  another  place,  he  says:  "The  ideas  are  very  often 
aroused  and  tumbled  out  of  their  dark  cells  into  open  daylight  by 
some  turbulent  and  tempestuous  passions."  One  of  the  German 
writers  pursues  the  same  metaphoric  strain  when  he  says:  "  Our 
present  moments  are  as  clay,  our  past,  as  chiseled  marble.  Then 
carefully  mould  the  present,  which  so  surely  becomes  the  past, 
that  memory's  marble  halls  may  contain  many  figures  of  noble 
design."  All  this  is  said  to  be  very  good  poetry,  but  it  is  exceed 
ingly  poor  Psychology. 

There  is,  then,  really  no  one  center  in  the  brain  devoted  exclu- 
sively to  memory.  We  have  no  memory  center  on  the  cerebral 
cortex,  as  we  have  a  speech  center  or  a  visual  center.  Each  cen- 
ter embraces  the  potentialities  of  memory  that  are  best  adapted 
to  the  line  of  activity  to  which  the  center  is  itself  devoted.  Thus 
the  seat  of  "  memory  of  the  eye  "  is  in  the  visual  center,  the  seat 
of  "  memory  of  the  ear"  is  in  the  auditory  center,  and  so  on. 

But  memory  is  not  equally  efficient,  distinct  and  keen  in  all 
the  realms  of  sense.  To  the  normal,  seeing  person,  visual  mem- 
ory is  the  most  important  and  significant.  Of  course  the  capacity 
for  distinct  memory  images  of  any  of  the  other  senses  is  differ- 


260  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ently  developed  in  different  individuals.  Charcqt  reports  a  patient 
who,  before  his  illness,  possessed  an  extraordinary  visual  mem- 
ory. This  he  lost  during  his  sickness  and  on  recovery  to  health, 
a  lively  memory  for  sound  took  its  place.  Many  people  have  no 
memory  whatever  for  smells  and  tastes.  When  the  power  of 
writing  is  lost  (agraphia)  or  in  motor  aphasia,  the  disturbance 
is  due  generally  to  loss  of  certain  motor  memories.  For  exam- 
ple, in  the  first  instance,  although  the  hand  is  in  a  normal,  health- 
ful condition,  capable  of  executing  an  indefinite  number  of  com- 
plicated movements,  the  power  of  "recalling"  the  movements 
which  produce  the  letters,  is  lacking.  Galton  says,  sharp  sight 
and  clear  visual  memory  do  not  always  go  together.  He  has 
published  an  interesting  report  in  his  "  Inquiries  into  Human 
Faculty,"  which  report  is  based  chiefly  upon  certain  statistical 
inquiries.  Among  other  things,  he  addressed  a  letter  to  hundreds 
of  persons,  asking  them  to  describe  the  mental  picture  they  pos- 
sessed of  their  breakfast  table  on  a  given  morning.  The  varia- 
tions were  many  and  wide. 

Memory  power  is  manifested  very  early  in  life.  A  child  less 
than  three  months  old  will  remember  the  face  of  parent  or  nurse, 
even  for  weeks.  M.  Perez  relates  the  instance  of  a  child  of  three 
months,  who  had  been  accustomed  to  see  a  bird  in  a  cage,  when 
it  happened  to  see  the  cage  without  the  bird,  showed  very  marked 
signs  of  bitter  disappointment.  After  a  large  number  of  inquiries 
I  have  discovered  that  the  average  college  student  remembers  as 
far  back  as  the  third  year  of  his  age — generally  some  unusual 
event  that  would  tend  to  make  a  vivid  impression  on  a  child's 
mind  —  e.  g.,  the  death  of  a  friend  or  relative,  a  railroad  journey, 
or  a  big  conflagration. 

My  own  earliest  remembered  experience  was  that  of  an  unsuc- 
cessful attempt,  when  but  two  and  a  half  years  of  age,  to  drink 
lemonade  through  a  straw,  at  the  restaurant  in  the  Capitol  at 
Washington. 

What  is  meant  by  a  good  memory?  In  passing  our  judgment 
upon  one's  memory  power,  we  must  test  by  no  less  than  two 
standards,— first,  the  readiness  with  which  such  images  are  re- 


MEMORY.  261 

called,  and  the  distinctness  of  such  images;  second,  the  length 
of  time  the  mind  has  retained  the  impression.  In  few  individuals 
are  these  two  elements  equally  prominent.  Some  have  ready 
memory  without  tenacity.  Others  have  tenacious  memories  with- 
out spontaneity.  The  memory  of  the  young  is  usually  more  quick 
and  ready,  while  that  of  the  adult  is  more  tenacious.  Not  only 
natural  endowment,  but  also  age,  practice  and  education  cause  va- 
riations in  memory  power.  We  are  told  a  great  many  stories  of 
the  prodigious  memory  power  of  the  ancients.  For  example,  it 
is  related  that  Themistocles  knew  every  citizen  of  Athens,  and 
that  Cyrus  could  recognize  every  soldier  of  his  army.  Hortensius 
could  sit  all  day  at  an  auction,  and  at  evening  could  give  an  ac- 
count, from  memory,  of  everything  sold,  the  purchasers,  and  the 
price.  It  is  but  natural  that  the  ancients  should  possess  better 
memories  than  we,  for  there  was  far  less  to  divert  their  attention 
and  there  were  fewer  facts  to  remember.  Furthermore,  they  never 
relied  as  we  do  upon  writing  memoranda,  and  the  like,  but  re- 
tained what  they  desired  to  preserve  by  a  pure  mental  act.  Their 
method  of  verbal  teaching  also  conduced  to  strengthen  the  mem- 
ory. Most  of  us  to-day,  as  we  look  back  upon  our  university 
course,  remember  with  greater  clearness  those  facts  supplied  by 
oral  lecture  rather  than  those  gained  from  book  recitations. 

The  quickness  with  which  the  memory  of  some  individuals  acts 
is  most  remarkable.  For  example,  one  person  hears  a  lot  of  un- 
connected names  recited,  and  can  repeat  them  all  in  the  precise 
order  in  which  they  were  uttered,  while  another  can  recall  but  few 
or  none.  One  pupil  can  learn  a  page  or  his  entire  lesson  simply 
by  reading  or  hearing  it  read  once;  while  another  can,  with  great 
difficulty,  repeat  only  a  single  line  correctly. 

As  a  remarkable  example  of  a  quick  memory  I  cite  the  follow- 
ing instance,  which  came  under  my  own  observation.  On  an  Au- 
gust afternoon  in  Berlin,  I  was  walking  with  a  friend  from  America 
who  had  never  before  been  in  the  city.  We  strolled  down  Fried- 
ericb  Strasse  toward  Unterden  Linden,  conversing  all  the  while 
and  passing  a  multitude  of  various  little  shops.  After  going  six 
blocks  I  interrupted  him  by  saying  that  I  must  go  back  to  Herr 


262  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Klausen's  shop  for  some  stationery  which  I  had  forgotten.  My 
friend  assured  me  that  we  had  passed  no  such  shop — that  it 
must  be  further  on.  I  was  sure  we  had  passed  it,  and  told  him 
so.  At  this,  he  named  in  order  each  shop  which  we  had  passed 
and  in  their  correct  order,  just  as  we  had  passed  them,  as  was 
proven  by  retracing  our  steps.  He  had  never  been  on  this  par- 
ticular street  before,  and  yet  without  any  serious  endeavor,  and 
absorbed  in  conversation,  had  a  clear  mental  image  of  the  more 
than  eighty  shops  we  had  passed.  A  remarkable  example  of 
spontaneous  memory  is  related  of  Adele  aus  der  Ohe,  the  already 
famous  pianist  and  pupil  of  Liszt.  When  less  than  three  years  of 
age  she  happened  to  be  playing  with  her  dolls  in  the  same  room 
in  which  her  sister  was  taking  her  music  lesson.  This  sister  made 
some  mistake  for  which  she  was  criticised  severely,  and  at  the  same 
time  little  Adele  ran  to  the  piano  stool  at  the  side  of  her  sister 
and  began  to  clamor  to  get  upon  the  stool  herself,  calling  out 
1 '  Ich  I  Ich  ! ' '  To  satisfy  her  whim  she  was  lifted  to  the  piano  and 
played  correctly  from  ear  memory,  a  large  portion  of  the  com- 
position which  the  music  master  had  himself  played,  and  which 
formed  the  basis  of  the  sister's  music  lesson. 

Such  a  ready  and  spontaneous  memory  as  here  exemplified,  is 
not  really  so  indicative  of  large  and  profound  powers  of  mind  as  it 
is  significant  as  an  intellectual  convenience.  It  is  the  intentional 
memory  that  is  characteristic  of  mental  development  rather  than 
the  spontaneous  memory.  By  intentional  or  voluntary  memory 
we  mean  those  cases  of  recall  in  which  the  objects  remembered  are 
voluntarily  sought  for  by  a  conscious  mental  effort.  For  exam- 
ple, as  in  the  illustration  already  given,  I  recall  the  appearance 
of  a  house,  the  points  of  a  landscape,  the  face  of  my  friend, 
which  at  first  comes  up  before  the  mind  as  a  vague,  cloud-like 
form,  with  scarcely  a  distinguishing  point  or  characteristic,  and 
seemingly  without  a  single  loose  thread  by  means  of  which  one 
might  get  hold  of  the  image  in  more  distinct  outline  and  fill  it 
with  more  definite  content.  Intentional  or  voluntary  memory 
is  possible  whenever  the  mind  can  begin  with  such  a  vague  ob- 
ject and  bring  it  forth  into  its  pristine  state.  In  such  an  opera- 


MEMORY.  263 

tion  we  begin  with  an  object  which  we  are  sure  in  our  original 
act  of  knowledge  had  some  association  with  that  which  we  seek, 
MDfl  we  dwell  upon  such  until  the  fact  we  seek  occurs  to  the  mind, 
when  it  is  recognized  and  greeted  with  a  warm  welcome. 

There  is  an  intimate  connection  between  the  bodily  condition 
nnd  the  phenomena  of  memory.  The  extent,  grasp,  and  range 
of  the  memory  span,  as  well  as  the  intensity  and  persistence  of  the 
memory  images,  is  dependent  upon  the  bodily  condition.  By  this 
we  mean  both  the  bodily  condition  at  the  time  the  original  per- 
cept is  acquired,  and  the  bodily  condition  at  the  time  the  object 
is  sought  for  in  memory.  Objects  which  are  originally  prehended 
and  perceived  when  in  a  certain  condition  of  health,  when  the 
"  head  is  as  clear  as  a  bell,"  we  can  afterwards  recall  quite  read- 
ily with  little  or  no  conscious  effort.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we 
are  wearied  by  labor,  fatigued  by  tedious  travel,  exhausted  by 
watching,  or  suffering  with  pain,  the  facts  that  transpire  become 
almost  a  blank  when  we  seek  to  recover  them.  This  is  but  nat- 
ural, and  right  in  line  with  the  deliverances  of  modern  physiologi- 
cal Psychology.  Since  memory  has  its  physiological  expression 
in  the  power  of  the  organism  to  preserve  traces  of  impressions 
received  and  in  connection  with  their  associates,  it  is  self-evident 
that  the  fresher  and  more  energetic  the  vital  and  neural  processes, 
the  better  may  things  be  learned,  i.  e.,  the  original  sense  per- 
ceptions will  leave  behind  certain  deeper  and  more  permanent 
traces.  In  this  we  have  a  reason  for  the  fact  that  childhood 
and  youth  are  the  proper  time  for  acquisition,  and  also  a  basis 
for  the  other  fact,  that  what  is  then  learned  is  more  persistent 
and  better  preserved  than  the  experiences  of  the  latter  years 
of  our  life.  In  old  age  we  constantly  find  that  the  events  of 
childhood  are  therefore  remembered  better,  while  the  events  of 
later  years,  though  of  quite  recent  occurrence,  readily  fall  into 
oblivion. 

In  old  age,  the  brain  processes  seem  to  lack  the  energy  neces- 
sary in  order  to  preserve  fresh  impressions.  Thus  it  is  that,  as 
aclass  (thanks  to  the  Fates  there  are  some  brilliant  exceptions!), 
old  persons  revel  in  old  facts,  the  facts  of  their  early  days,  and 


264  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

have  little  sympathy  for  the  struggling  but  growing  mind  of  the 
youth,  chafing  so  impetuously  at  his  side.  Old  men  (as  a  rule)  love 
to  read  old  books,  and  young  men  prefer  to  read  new  books.  It 
would  be  better  for  the  world  and  for  all  concerned,  if  at  times  this 
condition  could  be  reversed.  As  Professor  James  so  pertinently 
puts  it:  "  Our  education  is  a  ceaseless  compromise  between  the 
conservative  and  progressive  factors."  We  are  constantly  plac- 
ing newly  acquired  facts  under  old  heads  of  classification,  just  as 
we  interpret  and  explain  the  new  fact  in  light  of  what  is  already 
known.  Thus,  the  child,  on  perceiving  the  wilted  flowers  in  the 
vase,  said:  "Oh,  mamma,  those  flowers  are  all  melted!"  The 
little  Florida  child,  who  called  the  first  snowballs  he  ever  saw, 
"oranges,"  acted  according  to  the  same  inevitable  law.  Like- 
wise as  to  the  child  who  calls  the  zebra  a  "striped  horse,"  or  the 
savage  who  calls  the  horse  a  gigantic  dog. 

As  we  grow  older  we  become  more  and  more  enslaved  to  these 
old  stock  conceptions,  less  capable  of  assimilating  new  facts  in 
new  ways.  So  it  is  that  we  have  come  to  speak  of  the  "dead 
line"  of  fifty,  or  fifty-five,  or  sixty  years,  meaning  that  as  a  rule, 
men  do  not  acquire  much  new  material  beyond  that  age,  but  are 
simply  engaged  in  "threshing  over  the  old  straw." 

It  is  a  general  psycho-physical  law  that  the  later  acquisitions 
of  the  old  person  are  subject  to  more  speedy  dissolution  than 
those  gained  earlier  in  life.  Added  to  this  is  the  fact,  proven  by 
recent  investigations,  that  growth  focuses  now  upon  one  set  of 
organs  and  functions,  and  now  upon  another,  which  must  be  taken 
in  connection  with  the  more  significant  fact  that  the  eye,  hand 
and  arm,  voice,  chest  and  other  centers  and  functions,  have  cer- 
tain "nascent"  periods,  during  which  they  grow  far  more  than 
for  a  long  time  before  or  after.  There  is,  then,  a  certain  stage  in 
the  development  of  the  pupil  when  he  can  learn  certain  facts  and 
pursue  certain  studies  with  greater  facility  than  at  any  other  pe- 
riod of  his  existence.  By  experimental  investigations  we  seek  to 
find  out  what  nascent  periods  clearly  manifest  themselves  at  any 
given  stage  of  development,  and  the  length  of  time  they  persist. 
Facts  acquired  during  these  periods  of  maximum  energy  are  not 


MEMORY.  265 

only  acquired  with  greater  ease  but  are  better  remembered  than 
if  acquired  at  any  other  time. 

Again,  things  we  have  learned  and  experienced  in  an  unusually 
energetic  and  cheerful  frame  of  mind  are  more  easily  retained 
than  things  we  have  sought  to  acquire  when  petulant,  enervated 
and  out  of  sorts  generally.  This  is  what  Spencer  and  other  edu- 
cational reformers  have  in  mind  when  they  tell  us  that  the  true 
pedagogical  method  will  make  the  work  of  education  pleasant 
and  delightful  to  the  child.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  food  is 
better  assimilated,  and  hence  does  more  good,  when  partaken  at 
a  meal  where  good  cheer  prevails  than  when  one  is  grieved, 
angry,  worried  or  anxious.  So  it  is  with  our  intellectual  dietary. 
If  the  mental  menu  be  well  arranged  so  as  to  be  appetizing  and 
conducive  to  cheerfulness,  much  greater  good  — and  a  better 
good  — will  be  accomplished  than  when  one's  intellectual  tasks 
become  one  ceaseless,  laborious  grind.  Indeed,  the  most  signifi- 
cant of  all  the  changes  taking  place  in  our  modern  school  system 
is  the  endeavor  to  make  the  acquirement  of  knowledge  pleasur- 
able rather  than  painful.  "Asceticism  is  disappearing  out  of 
education  as  out  of  life."  With  respect  to  the  mental  faculties 
and  functions,  it  is  a  well-established  general  law  that  under  nor- 
mal conditions  healthful  action  is  pleasurable,  while  the  forms  of 
activity  which  give  pain  are  not  healthful.  Children  assiduously 
pursue  those  pleasures  which  the  healthful  exercise  of  the  faculties 
furnishes.  Experience  is  constantly  revealing  to  the  teacher  with 
ever  increasing  clearness  that  there  is  always  a  pedagogical 
method  to  be  found  productive  of  intense  interest  and  delight, 
and  it  has  continually  been  demonstrated  by  other  tests  that  any 
such  method  is  the  right  method.  It  is  a  law  of  mental  economy 
that  studies  are  to  be  pursued  in  a  manner  to  evoke  a  pleasur- 
able interest  rather  than  painful  experiences,  for  only  in  this  way 
can  the  best  results  be  attained. 

Just  as  a  fresh,  heal  thy  and  well-nourished  brain  is  essential  in 
the  first  acquisition  of  material  for  memory,  so  is  it  also  a  neces- 
sary condition  of  the  act  of  recall  and  re-presentation  itself; 
when  this  material  is  again  sought  for,  there  must  be  sufficient 


266  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

energy  and  vigor  in  the  organism,  especially  in  the  nervous  cen- 
ters more  intimately  concerned  in  acts  of  association.  It  is 
related  of  Sir'  Henry  Holland,  an  English  physician,  while  travel- 
ing in  Germany  and  visiting  the  mines  in  the  Hartz  mountains, 
that  he  suddenly  forgot  his  German  in  consequence  of  over-fa- 
tigue, and  it  returned  to  him  only  after  he  was  rested  and  re- 
freshed. Here  are  his  own  words :  "  I  descended  on  the  same  day 
two  very  deep  mines  in  the  Hartz  Mountains,  remaining  some 
hours  underground  in  each.  While  in  the  second  mine,  and 
exhausted  both  from  fatigue  and  inanition,  I  felt  the  utter  im- 
possibility of  talking  longer  with  the  German  inspector  who  ac- 
companied me.  Every  German  word  and  phrase  deserted  my 
recollection,  and  it  was  not  until  I  had  taken  food  and  wine,  and 
been  some  time  at  rest  that  I  regained  them  again." 

Dr.  Beattie  relates  that  one  of  his  friends,  having  received  a 
blow  on  the  head,  lost  all  his  knowledge  of  Greek,  although  his 
memory  was  unimpaired.  The  same  thing  is  noticed  with  regard 
to  music.  A  child,  having  received  a  severe  blow  on  the  head,  re- 
mained for  three  days  unconscious.  On  coming  to  himself,  he 
was  found  to  have  forgotten  all  that  he  had  learned  of  music. 
Nothing  else  was  lost.  In  seasons  of  extreme  weakness,  we  can- 
not recover  even  the  most  familiar  names,  facts  and  dates,  and 
our  most  common  knowledge  fails  to  come  at  our  bidding.  In  a 
happy  frame  of  mind,  especially  in  an  excited  condition,  memo- 
ries arise  which  cannot  possibly  be  evoked  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances. The  uses  of  certain  drugs,  such  as  opium,  hasheesh 
and  Indian  hemp,  in  most  persons,  heighten  the  memory  power. 
Good,  healthy  circulation  of  the  blood  is  an  essential  to  a  good 
memory. 

You  might  be  tempted  to  urge  the  fact  of  common  observation, 
which  seems  to  contradict  what  we  have  said  with  reference  to 
freshness  and  bodily  vigor,  as  a  prerequisite  of  a  good  memory  — 
I  refer  to  the  fact  that  so  little  is  remembered  of  the  experiences 
that  transpire  in  the  earliest  years  of  childhood,  when  the  brain 
is  freshest  and  most  impressible.  As  already  stated,  memory  sel- 
dom goes  back  beyond  the  third  year  of  our  childhood.  This  is 


MEMORY.  267 

due  largely  to  the  fact  that  the  paths  of  association  in  the 
"brand-new"  brain  of  the  infant,  are  not  clearly  defined,  well- 
fixed  or  deep-seated,  and  is  also  due  to  the  fact  that  what  a  child 
learns  during  the  first  year  or  two  of  his  infancy  is  very  different 
from  the  acquisitions  of  later  years.  There  is  a  want  of  continu- 
ity and  harmonious  progression  between  the  experiences  of  the 
earliest  and  those  of  the  more  mature  years,  and,  as  a  rule,  a  want 
of  that  interest  which  is  necessary  to  frequent  recall, and  persist- 
ing retention, of  the  older  events  fresh  in  memory. 

It  is  not  out  of  place  for  us  here  to  notice  that  certain  times 
of  the  day  and  certain  seasons  of  the  year  are  most  favorable 
and  especially  conducive  to  the  successful  acquisition  of  facts  for 
subsequent  remembrance.  As  a  rule,  the  later  evening  hours,  or 
'•wee  sma'  hours"  permit  the  attention  to  be  most  intently  fixed 
upon  the  object  of  thought;  but  it  is  sometimes  found  that  the 
acquisitions  of  the  midnight  toiler,  which  seemed  to  be  so  clear 
and  distinct,  and  bid  fair  to  be  so  persistent,  have  well-nigh  van- 
ished in  the  morning.  Much  depends  upon  the  individual  pecul- 
iarities of  the  student.  For  myself  I  find  that  the  hours  from  ten 
to  two  o'clock  at  night  are  the  hours  in  which  I  do  the  best  work. 
By  this  I  mean  that  during  these  four  hours  of  the  twenty-four 
greater  rapidity  of  thought,  clearer  associations  and  more  in- 
tense concentration  are  possible  than  at  any  other  time  of  the 
day.  I  would  not  recommend  such  unseasonable  hours  to  any 
student,  any  more  than  I  myself  would  listen  to  a  recommenda- 
tion from  some  one  else  to  the  effect  that  five  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing is  the  time  at  which  to  take  up  the  heavier  mental  tasks. 
This  is  certain,  that  the  person  who  sleeps  less  than  the  rule, 
e.  g.,  the  person  who  sleeps  but  five  hours,  ought  by  all  means 
eat  more  and  oftener  than  the  average  person,  if  he  wish  to 
sustain  careful,  painstaking,  mental  effort.  Loss  of  sleep  should 
always  be  offset  by  porterhouse  steak,  or  something  equally 
nutritious. 

Both  classes  of  facts — those  which  indicate  the  dependence  on 
bodily  conditions  of  both  the  power  to  effectively  acquire  the 
materials  ior  memory,  and  the  power  to  recall  them  with  ease— 


268  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

can  be  accounted  for  on  the  basis  of  the  views  we  have  already 
expressed  with  reference  to  the  relation  of  reciprocity  that  ob- 
tains between -body  and  mind.  The  varying  condition  of  the 
body  through  the  several  sensations  of  which  it  is  primarily  the 
occasion,  enters  into  all  the  experiences  of  consciousness,  and  is 
really  the  backbone  of  them  all.  It  is  the  great  screen  on  which 
all  the  mental  activities  are  projected,  and  is  the  never-failing 
basis  and  accompaniment  of  them  all.  If  the  sensations  are  made 
abnormal,  disturbed  or  unpleasant,  owing  to  certain  peculiar  con- 
ditions of  the  body,  the  mind  is  so  absorbed  or  distracted  by  the 
obtrusive  and  unusual  elements  of  the  sensations  that  it  has  little 
attention  for  other  objects,  and  little  or  no  energy  to  concentrate 
upon  them  so  as  to  make  theta  well  remembered. 

It  is  pertinent  here  to  refer  to  what  is  ordinarily  called  physio- 
logical memory.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  old  habits  are  diffi- 
cult to  overcome,  and  that  fatigue  or  carelessness  will  lead  us 
unconsciously  to  forsake  a  new  for  an  established  method  of 
action.  But  it  is  only  by  means  of  experiment  that  we  can  tell 
whether  the  old  habit  interferes  with  the  forming  of  a  new  path. 
To  decide  this  problem  was  the  object  of  a  series  of  experiments 
undertaken  by  Mr.  Bergstrom  at  Clark  University  only  a  few 
months  ago.  Unprinted  cards  were  made  into  packs  of  eighty, 
each  pack  containing  ten  kinds  of  cards,  and  each  kind  having 
the  same  abstract  word  printed  at  the  top,  such  as  "  Vitalism," 
" Homophone"  and  " Identity." 

There  were,  then,  ten  groups,  of  eight  cards  each,  in  each  pack 
of  eighty.  The  experiment  consisted  in  sorting  two  packs  in 
quick  succession,  placing  cards  containing  the  same  word  in  the 
same  pile,  the  arrangement  of  the  words  to  be  different  for  the 
second  pack.  The  length  of  time  required  for  sorting  the  second 
pack  was  longer  in  nearly  every  case,  differing  with  different  in- 
dividuals from  three  to  seventeen  seconds.  The  arm,  from  mere 
habit  or  physiological  memory,  would  seek  to  place  a  given  card 
(e.  g.,  one  bearing  the  word  "Identity  ")  in  the  same  relative  posi- 
tion with  reference  to  the  other  cards,  as  the  cards  bearing  the 
same  name  were  placed  in  sorting  the  first  pack.  The  arm  would 


MEMORY.  269 

do  this  of  itself  before  the  mind,  as  it  were,  got  a  chance  to  direct 
it  to  the  new  position  occupied  by  cards  of  that  kind  when  sorting 
the  second  pack.  The  results  gained  by  Mr.  Bergstrom  are  quite 
in  harmony  with  those  of  previous  investigators.  He  found  that 
memory  is  closely  related  to  habit  and  that  habits  are  chiefly 
physiological  in  their  basis.  His  results  also  show  that  men  are 
influenced  with  respect  to  memory  as  well  as  other  activities,  by 
the  state  of  the  weather,  by  food,  the  frequency  and  amount  of 
rest,  and  by  whatever  would  tend  to  modify  the  regularities  of 
mental  life,  as  grief,  anger,  anxiety  and  melancholia. 

Many  have  raised  the  question  as  to  whether  absolute  forget- 
fulness  is  possible  — that  is,  can  the  soul  lose  beyond  recovery  any- 
thing which  it  has  once  known  ?  In  answer  to  this  question,  it  may 
be  said  that  knowledge  which  has  remained  out  of  sight  for  a 
long  period  has  often  been  suddenly  recovered.  Numerous  exam- 
ples have  occurred  and  not  a  few  are  recorded  in  history.  The 
classical  tale  which  was  originally  published  by  Coleridge,  is  a 
case  in  point.  It  relates  to  a  servant  girl  in  Germany,  who  was 
very  ill  of  a  nervous  fever,  accompanied  by  violent  delirium.  In 
her  excited  ravings,  she  repeated  long  passages  from  classical 
and  rabbinical  writers,  which  excited  the  wonder,  terror  and  su- 
perstitious dread  of  all  who  heard  her,  most  of  these  persons 
thinking  the  girl  to  be  inspired  by  some  good  or  evil  spirit.  Some 
of  the  passages,  when  written  down,  were  found  to  correspond 
with  literal  extracts  from  learned  books.  On  examining  into  the 
history  of  her  life,  it  was  found  that  several  years  before,  when 
very  young,  she  had  lived  in  the  family  of  an  old  and  learned  pas- 
tor in  the  country,  who  had  been  in  the  habit  of  reading  aloud 
favorite  passages  from  the  very  writers  in  whose  works  these  ex- 
tracts were  discovered.  These  sounds,  at  that  early  age  so  unin- 
telligible and  meaningless  to  her,  were  nevertheless  so  deeply 
impressed  upon  her  mind  that  under  the  excitement  and  delirium 
of  the  troublous  fever,  they  were  reproduced  in  memory  and  in- 
voluntarily uttered.  Numerous  cases  are  recorded  by  physicians 
that  illustrate  this  same  interesting  fact.  Dr.  Rush  tells  us  of  an 
Italian,  he  once  attended,  who  died  in  New  York  of  yellow  fever, 


270  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

and  who,  in  the  first  stages  of  his  illness,  spoke  English  at  a 
later  period,  spoke  only  French  ;  and  just  before  his  death,  spoke 
only  the  language  of  his  early  boyhood,  Italian.  Dr.  Miih^nberg, 
formerly  a  renowned  Lutheran  clergyman  in  Philadelphia,  has 
made  the  interesting  observation  that  old  German  immigrants, 
whom  he  visited  during  their  last  illness,  frequently  prayed  in  the 
native  tongue  of  their  fatherland,  though  some  of  them  had  not 
spoken  it  for  fifty  or  sixty  years.  These  instances  conspire  with 
others  to  illustrate  the  fact  that  the  bodily  condition  and  the 
phenomena  of  memory  are  intimately  connected  and  vitally 
associated. 

The  memory  is  readily  affected  by  any  physiological  disturb- 
ances in  the  organism— -indeed,  the  memory  is  probably  the  fac- 
ulty first  to  react  to  any  disorder  in  the  organism .  How  far  a  fail- 
ure to  remember  can  be  regarded  as  an  abnormal  affair  is  really 
a  matter  of  degree,  and  must  be  decided  on  the  basis  of  the  cir- 
cumstances in  each  case.  A  person  who  can  repeat  the  names  of 
the  rulers  of  England  in  the  order,  and  with  the  dates  of  their 
accession  to  the  throne, is  said  to  have  an  unusually  good  mem- 
ory, while  the  person  who  cannot  remember  the  name  of  his  street 
or  the  number  of  the  house  in  which  he  has  lived  for  years  may 
certainly  be  said  to  have  a  poor  memory.  But  by  a  good  memory 
should  be  meant  not  only  the  persistence  of  certain  conscious 
images,  but  also  the  ability  to  recall  these  images  into  conscious- 
ness when  occasion  demands. 

In  the  approach  of  general  paralysis  memory  always  fails,  es- 
pecially for  recent  events,  and  the  acquirement  and  retention  of 
new  ideas  becomes  progressively  less.  After  a  time  there  is 
marked  absent-mindedness  and  a  forgetfulness  of  the  most  com- 
monplace duties ;  even  meals  are  forgotten.  Such  a  person,  for- 
getful of  what  he  was  about  to  say,  making  mistakes  in  counting 
or  changing  money,  becomes  easily  confused  and  is  totally  unfit 
for  business. 

The  term  amnesia  is  used  to  designate  the  pathological  condi- 
tion in  which  there  is  a  loss  of  memory.  We  have,  according  to 
the  accepted  classification  of  Ribot,  (1)  Temporary  Amnesia; 


MEMORY.  271 

(2)  Periodical  Amnesia;  (3)  Progressive  Amnesia,  and  (4)  Con- 
genital Amnesia. 

Temporary  amnesia  usually  makes  its  appearance  suddenly 
and  ends  just  as  suddenly  as  it  came.  The  attack  may  extend 
from  a  few  minutes  to  long  periods  of  time.  The  briefest  but 
clearest  and  most  common  forms  are  met  with  in  epilepsy.  In 
the  epileptic  and  similar  attacks, there  is  no  recollection  (or  at 
most  only  the  slightest  trace)  of  what  has  transpired. 

To  illustrate:  "A  patient  while  consulting  with  his  physician 
is  seized  with  epileptic  vertigo.  He  soon  recovers,  but  has  for- 
gotten having  paid  his  fee  a  moment  before  the  attack.  An  edu- 
cated man,  thirty-one  years  of  age,  found  himself  at  his  desk, 
feeling  rather  confused,  but  not  otherwise  ill.  He  remembered 
having  ordered  his  dinner,  but  not  of  eating  or  paying  for  it. 
He  returned  to  the  dining-room,  learned  that  he  had  both  eaten 
and  paid,  showing  no  signs  of  being  ill,  and  had  set  out  for  his 
office.  Unconsciousness  lasted  about  three  quarters  of  an  hour." 
Another  epileptic,  seized  with  a  sudden  paroxysm,  fell  in  a  shop, 
got  up,  and  eluding  the  shopman  and  his  friends  ran  away,  leav- 
ing his  hat  and  order  book  behind.  He  was  discovered  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  away,  asking  for  his  hat  at  all  the  shops,  but  not  hav- 
ing recovered  his  senses,  nor  did  he  become  conscious  until  he 
got  to  the  railway  ten  minutes  after.  Sometimes  the  loss  of  pre- 
viously known  facts  is  so  complete  that  re-education  becomes 
necessary.  "A  clergyman  of  rare  talent  and  energy,  of  sound 
education,  was  thrown  from  his  carriage  and  received  a  violent 
concussion  of  the  brain.  For  several  days  he  remained  utterly 
unconscious,  and  when  restored,  his  intellect  was  observed  to 
be  in  a  state  similar  to  that  of  a  naturally  intelligent  child.  Al- 
though in  middle  life  he  commenced  his  English  and  classical 
studies  under  tutors  and  was  progressing  satisfactorily,  when, 
after  several  months'  successful  study,  his  memory  gradually  re- 
turned, and  his  mind  resumed  all  its  wonted  vigor  and  its  former 
wealth  and  polish  of  culture." 

"A  gentleman  about  thirty  years  of  age,  of  wide  learning  and 
many  acquirements,  at  the  termination  of  a  severe  illness  was 


272  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

found  to  have  lost  recollection  of  everything,  even  the  names  of 
the  most  common  objects.  His  health  being  restored,  he  began 
to  re-acquire, knowledge  like  a  child.  After  learning  the  names  of 
objects,  he  was  taught  to  read,  and  after  this,  began  to  learn 
Latin.  He  made  considerable  progress,  when,  one  day  in  reading 
his  lesson  with  his  brother,  who  was  his  teacher,  he  suddenly 
stopped  and  put  his  hand  to  his  head.  Being  asked  why  he  did 
so,  he  replied :  'I  feel  a  peculiar  sensation  in  my  head,  and  now 
it  appears  to  me  I  knew  all  this  before.'  From  that  time  he 
rapidly  recovered  his  faculties." 

In  many  cases  of  memory  disorder,  the  cause  of  the  disorder 
is  retro-active;  that  is,  the  period  of  forgetfulness  extends  back 
of  the  time  when  the  real  cause  of  the  amnesic  disturbance  comes 
into  existence.  This  can  be  made  more  clear  by  reference  to  a 
single  illustration :  A  friend  of  mine  for  three  years  played  the 
position  of  "center  rush "  on  the  foot-ball  team  of  an  eastern  iu- 
stitution.  He  was  for  one  year  the  captain  of  the  team,  and,  of 
course,  was  responsible  for  all  the  plays  made  —  a  responsibility 
which  every  true  college  man  glories  in,  and  of  which  he  desires 
to  acquit  himself  in  the  best  possible  manner.  During  one  hotly 
contested  game,  he  was  badly  injured  in  the  last  half,  becoming 
unconscious  for  a  few  minutes,  and  then  delirious.  Now,  though 
he  was  injured  in  the  last  half  of  the  game,  in  the  very  closing 
minutes,  and  though  he  had  directed  every  play  previous  to  the 
injury,  he  could  not  remember  a  single  play  of  the  entire  game. 
The  results  of  the  injury,  so  far  as  memory  was  concerned,  ex- 
tended back  to  a  period  preceding  the  time  at  which  the  injury 
itself  actually  occurred.  In  other  words,  the  cause  of  the  mem- 
ory disturbance  was  retro-active  in  its  effect  upon  the  memory 
images  that  were  in  the  mind  at  the  time  of  the  mishap. 

Not  all  of  the  forms  of  memory  disorder  tend  toward  the  de- 
struction of  the  memory  faculty  itself.  Those  instanced  above 
have  been  only  such  as  show  diminution  or  effacement  of  the 
memory  power.  But  there  are  cases  just  as  morbid  and  patho- 
logical, that  are  entirely  opposite  in  character — cases  in  which 
memory  functions  act  with  increased  intensity,  acuteness,  and 


MEMORY.  273 

persistency.  This  state  of  exaltation  of  memory  is  called  hy- 
pernmesia  to  distinguish  the  phenomena  from  those  of  amnesia. 
Exaltations  of  memory  may  sometimes  be  general,  but  they  are 
more  frequently  partial. 

There  are  several  accounts  of  drowning  persons  saved  from 
imminent  death  which  go  to  show  that  at  the  moment  of  as- 
phyxia they  seem  to  see  their  entire  lives  unrolled,  "as  a  scroll," 
before  them,  even  to  the  minutest  detail.  One  such  testifies  "  that 
every  instant  of  his  former  life  seemed  to  glance  across  his  recol- 
lection in  a  retrograde  succession,  not  in  mere  outline,  but  the 
picture  being  filled  with  every  minute  and  collateral  feature  form- 
ing a  kind  of  panoramic  picture  of  his  entire  existence,  each  act 
of  it  accompanied  by  a  sense  of  right  and  wrong."  Ribot  relates 
an  analogous  case  of  "  a  man  of  remarkably  clear  head  who  was 
crossing  a  railway  in  the  country,  when  an  express  train  at  full 
speed  appeared  closely  approaching  him.  He  had  just  time  to 
throw  himself  down  in  the  center  of  the  road  between  the  two 
lines  of  rails,  and  as  the  vast  train  passed  over  him,  the  sense  of 
impending  danger  to  his  very  existence  brought  vividly  into  his 
recollection  every  incident'of  his  former  life."  Even  when  inter- 
preted most  liberally,  such  examples  show  a  marked  intensity  on 
the  part  of  the  memory  that  is  much  above  the  ordinary. 

Such  exaltation  of  the  memory  as  has  already  been  stated, 
may  also  be  induced  by  the  use  of  drugs  and  some  of  the  narcot- 
ics and  intoxicants.  A  classical  example  of  this  is  that  of  De 
Quincey  in  his  "Confessions  of  an  English  Opium  Eater,"  in 
which  he  says: 

"  Sometimes  I  seemed  to  have  lived  seventy  or  a  hundred  years 
in  one  night.  .  .  .  The  minutest  incidents  of  childhood,  or  for- 
gotten scenes  of  later  years  were  often  revived.  I  could  not  be 
said  to  recollect  them,  for  if  I  had  been  told  them  when  waking,! 
should  not  have  been  able  to  acknowledge  them  as  parts  of  my 
past  experience.  But  placed  as  they  were  before  me,  in  dreams 
like  intuitions,  and  clothed  in  all  their  evanescent  circumstances 
and  accompanying  feelings,  I  recognized  them  instantaneously." 

Abercrombie,  in  his  "Essay  on  Intellectual  Power,"  tells  us  of 

L.  P.-18 


274  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

a  remarkable  case  of  partial  excitation  which  cannot  be  over- 
looked. It  is  of  a  lady  who,  in  the  last  stage  of  a  prolonged  ill- 
ness, was  carried  from  London  to  a  lodging  in  the  country.  At 
her  request,  her  infant  daughter  was  taken  to  visit  her,  and  after 
a  brief  stay  of  but  a  few  hours,  carried  back  to  the  city.  The  lady 
died  a  few  days  after  and  the  daughter  grew  up,  without  any  recol- 
lection of  her  mother,  until  she  was  of  mature  age.  It  happened 
one  day  that  she  wandered  into  the  room  in  which  her  mother 
had  died  without  knowing  it  to  have  been  so ;  strange  to  say,  she 
started  on  entering  it  and  when  a  friend,  surprised  at  her  agita- 
tion, asked  the  cause  of  it,  she  was  met  with  the  reply,  "I  have  a 
distinct  impression  of  having  been  in  this  room  before,  and  that 
a  lady  who  lay  in  that  corner  and  seemed  very  ill,  leaned  over  me 
and  wept." 

We  add  one  more  case  by  way  of  illustration,  taken  from  Dr. 
Carpenter's  rich  fund  of  interesting  examples.  "A  clergyman,  en- 
dowed with  a  decidedly  artistic  temperament  (a  fact  worth  not- 
ing in  this  particular  instance),  went  with  a  party  of  friends  to 
a  castle  in  Sussex,  which  he  did  not  remember  to  have  previously 
visited.  As  he  approached  the  gateway,  he  became  conscious  of 
a  very  vivid  impression  of  having  seen  it  before ;  and  he  seemed 
to  himself  to  see  not  only  the  gateway  itself,  but  donkeys  be- 
neath the  arch,  and  people  on  the  top  of  it.  His  conviction  that 
he  must  have  visited  the  castle  on  some  former  occasion  made 
him  inquire  from  his  mother  if  she  could  throw  any  light  on  the 
matter.  She  at  once  informed  him  that,  being  in  that  part  of 
the  country  when  he  was  about  eighteen  months  old,  she  had 
gone  over  with  a  large  party,  and  taken  him  in  the  pannier  of  a 
donkey ;  that  the  elders  of  the  party,  having  brought  lunch  with 
them,  had  eaten  it  on  the  roof  of  the  gateway  where  they  would 
have  been  seen  from  below,  while  he  had  been  left  on  the  ground 
with  the  attendants  and  donkeys." 

What  has  alrea.dy  been  said  goes  to  show  the  intimate  relation 
between  the  phenomena  of  memory  and  the  brain  as  the  physical 
basis.  Memory,  just  like  association,  is  absolutely  conditioned 
upon  the  brain-paths,  and  the  excellence  of  memory  depends  upon 


MEMORY.  275 

the  number,  directness  and  persistency  of  these  paths  through  the 
brain.  The  number  of  such  brain-paths  is  directly  dependentupon 
the  variety,  complexity  and  range  of  his  "  perception  "  experi- 
ences. The  persistence  of  the  paths  is  dependent  upon  the  quality 
of  the  brain  tissue,  its  plasticity,  texture,  development  with  re- 
spect to  fibers  of  association.  The  quantity  and  quality  of  the 
blood  supply,  the  age  of  the  individual  and  a  host  of  other  fac- 
tors contribute  to  the  tenacity  with  which  the  brain  retains  the 
sense  impressions  and  their  "  associates."  We  have  already  re- 
ferred to  the  enfeeblement  of  memory  in  old  age  and  by  means 
of  fatigue,  drugs,  narcotics  and  the  like.  You  have  seen  individ- 
uals weakened  by  age  in  whom  the  brain-paths  are  not  at  all 
permanent  —  persons  who  will  ask  the  same  question  over  and 
over  again,  not  remembering  that  they  have  asked  it  before  or 
received  an  answer. 

The  number  of  associated  precepts  must  be  increased  if  mem- 
ory is  to  be  strengthened  and  rendered  more  effective.  As  already 
stated,  in  order  to  have  a  good  memory  one  must  form  many 
and  diverse  associations  with  every  object  he  perceives,  each  of 
which  he  may  use  as  a  clue  in  his  later  search  for  the  object  in 
thought.  Individuals  have  better  memories  with  reference  to 
facts  that  lie  within  their  own  line  of  occupation  and  observa- 
tion. Men  tend  to  specification  in  memory.  What  one  is  con- 
tinually thinking  of,  that  he  remembers  best  of  all.  The  broker 
on  'change  will  remember  the  stock  quotations;  the  railroad  con- 
ductor will  remember  the  names  of  stations,  the  exact  distance 
between  them  and  the  time  his  train  is  due  at  each  of  them ;  the 
dry-goods  merchant  remembers  prices;  the  policeman,  the  names 
of  the  streets  on  his  beat ;  the  hotel  clerk  will  be  able  to  call  by 
name  nearly  all  the  patrons  of  the  house ;  the  college  athlete  the 
records  of  every  high  jump,  100-yard  dash  or  pole  vault  made  in 
the  course  of  a  year,  simply  because  he  makes  a  specialty  of  such 
facts  and  thinks  over  them  continually,  while  he  may  not  remem- 
ber his  lessons  for  a  single  hour,  just  because  he  does  not  make 
a  specialty  of  his  lessons  or  the  class  of  facts  with  which  they 
deal. 


LESSON  XXI. 

IMAGINATION. 

WE  have  already  spoken  of  memory  as  one  of  the  forms  under 
which  the  re-presentative  power  of  the  mind  manifests  itself.  An- 
other phase  of  manifestation  assumed  by  this  same  re-presenta- 
tive power  is  met  with  in  the  activities  of  the  imagination. 

In  a  general  way,  by^JjiedBi^gisa^^^  of 

the  mind  by  means  of  which  ideas  of  things  not  present  are 
formed.  Materials  already  present  to  the  mind,  whether  retained, 
or  recalled  by  memory,  or  actually  present  to  sense-observation 
are  recombined  into  new  wholes.  The  raw  materials  of  sense  and 
memory  are  really  wrought  into  new  fabric  by  the  power  of 
imagination.  The  imagination  never  creates  new  material  but 
only  new  forms,  under  which  the  material  already  possessed  may 
appear.  Thus  you  may  imagine  a  tree  growing  from  the  back 
of  an  elephant,  but  the  image  thus  created  is  made  from  mate- 
rials already  perceived  by  the  senses.  In  its  essential  features  the 
elephant  is  like  elephants  you  have  already  seen,  and  the  tree, 
in  its  main  charactristics,  is  like  trees  already  met  with  in  your 
past  experience. 

This  imaging  power  manifests  itself  very  early  in  the  life  of 
each  individual.  The  child  cries  for  a  lost  but  treasured  toy  — 
his  rattle-box  or  gaily-colored  ball.  You  substitute  another  toy, 
hoping  to  appease  him,  but  he  dashes  it  angrily  to  the  floor  be- 
cause it  does  not  correspond  to  the  image  he  has  in  his  mind — a 
picture  of  the  toy  as  it  should  appear.  A  boy  has  his  mamma 
write  a  letter  to  "Santa  Glaus,"  telling  his  wants  and  expecta- 
tions for  the  Christmastide.  Perhaps  it  is  a  box  of  tools.  The 
boy  has  a  picture  in  his  mind  of  just  how  that  box  of  tools 
should  look,  the  saw  it  is  to  contain  is  clearly  before  his  mind's 
eye  and  he  can  almost  tell  the  number  of  its  teeth.  The  hatchet 
(276) 


IMAGINATION.  277 

must  be  painted  red,  and  so  on.  This  boy  has  imaged  by  his  own 
mental  effort,  the  things  he  has  not  actually  seen  as  yet.  Or 
perhaps  it  is  a  little  girl  who  has  prayed  that  good  old  "Kris 
Kingle"  would  bring  her  a  beautiful  doll.  She  has  in  mind  the 
kind  of  a  doll  she  desires.  It  must  be  of  a  certain  size,  with  eyes 
that  open  and  shut,  must  have  hair  that  curls,  and  must  be 
clothed  in  a  dress  that  is  "hem-stitched"  and  "herring-boned" 
or  "feather-edged."  That  is,  in  the  absence  of  the  actual  object 
—  the  doll— she  has  pictured  to  her  mind  just  how  it  should 
look  when  it  actually  materializes  — when  it  is  no  longer  a  fig- 
ment of  the  imagination  — the  doll  of  her  dreams  — but  a  real 
"flesh  and  blood"  doll. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  imagination.  When  the  child  cries  for 
its  lost  toy,  the  act  of  the  imagination  simply  consists  in  holding 
before  the  mind  a  more  or  less  faithful  copy  of  the  toy  as  seen  in 
his  previous  experiences.  The  boy  comes  in  at  the  schoolroom 
door  with  a  small  stick  in  his  mouth.  The  teacher  asks  him 
what  he  has  in  his  mouth.  He  answers,  "a  cigar."  He  is  told 
that  smoking  is  not  allowed  in  the  schoolroom  for  he  might  set 
fire  to  the  clothes  of  some  of  the  children.  He  imagines  the  stick 
to  be  a  cigar,  and  the  teacher  tactfully  and  properly  carries  out 
the  idea.  The  first  of  these  two  cases  illustrates  the  one  kind  of 
imagination,  known  as  the  reproductive  imagination.  The 
second  case  represents  the  second  kind  of  imagination — the  kind 
that  is  to  receive  more  especial  attention  in  this  chapter — the 
constructive  imagination. 

You  can  readily  see  that  the  imagination  and  memory  are  very 
closely  related  to  each  other.  In  fact,  in  some  of  the  phases  under 
which  it  manifests  itself,  one  cannot  readily  distinguish  between 
acts  of  reproductive  imagination  and  memory.  Certain  it  is 
that  they  are  most  intimately  associated.  Unless  memory  re- 
store the  impressions  of  past  experience,  who  could  picture  a  new 
event  or  object?  How  can  you  imagine  a  new  color  without  re- 
calling certain  colors  you  have  already  seen?  Principal  Russell, 
of  the  Worcester  Normal  School,  tells  us  of  a  boy  who,  at  the  age 
of  seven,  was  observed  one  day  as  he  stood  drinking  water  at  a 


278  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

sink,  with  his  back  to  other  people.  He  was  making  believe  that 
he  was  drinking  in  a  saloon,  and  stood  with  his  feet  crossed,  re- 
marking on  the  quality  of  the  drink  to  the  imaginary  barkeeper. 
He  paid  imaginary  money  and  received  imaginary  change.  How 
could  this  stripling  of  a  boy  construct  any  such  piece  of  drama 
without  the  service  rendered  by  his  memory  power? 

The  distinction  between  the  reproductive  and  creative  or  con- 
structive imagination  is  as  old  as  Kant ;  and  yet,  for  more  than 
a  century  have  psychologists  labored  to  define  the  exact  domain 
of  each  of  these  kinds  of  imagination.  For  our  purpose  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  say  that  the  reproductive  imagination  must  furnish  all 
the  raw  material — its  function  is  to  reproduce  the  sense-impres- 
sions. The  creative  or  constructive  imagination  combines  this 
material  into  an  endless  variety  of  forms,  but  at  the  same  time 
is,  to  some  extent,  limited  by  this  self-same  material. 

Now,  you  have  already  learned  that  children  differ  greatly 
with  reference  to  the  development  of  their  various  sense  capaci- 
ties. It  has  been  madeplain  that  no  two  children  see,  touch,  hear, 
smell  or  taste  alike.  Each  child  receives  a  sense-picture  of  the 
outside  world  quite  different  from  that  received  by  every  other 
child  in  the  universe.  Perceiving  things  differently— receiving 
such  different  impressions,  you  can  see  quite  readily  that  the  raw 
material  supplied  to  the  imagination  for  it  to  mould  and  fashion 
at  will,  is  quite  different  with  different  individuals.  This  gives 
rise  to  enormous  individual  differences  in  the  imagination  among 
children.  We  shall  first  take  up  the  differences  with  respect  to 
the  reproductive  imagination.* 

Psychologists  have  distinguished  at  least  four  different  types 
of  mind  according  as  the  images  arising  from  one  or  the  other  of 
the  four  senses  predominate  in  imagination.  We  have  therefore, 
(1)  the  tactile  type;  (2)  the  visual  type ;  (3)  the  auditory  type ; 
(4)  the  motor  type. 

1.  The  Tactile  Type.    To  this  class  belong  those  individuals 


*  Dr.  W.  H.  Burnham  gives  an  interesting  and  extended  summary  of  these  differ- 
ent types  in  his  excellent  article  in  "  The  Pedagogical  Seminary,"  Vol.  II,  No.  2, 
March,  1893. 


IMAGINATION.  279 

who  reproduce  in  the  imagination,  chiefly  such  impressions  as 
come  through  the  dermal  senses,  be  these  impressions  within  the 
realm  of  either  the  temperature,  pressure,  contact  or  tickle  sense. 
This  class  is, I  think, comparatively  small  in  number  and  is  made 
up  chiefly  of  defectives.  The  blind  deaf-mutes,  such  as  marvel- 
ous Laura  Bridgman  or  Helen  Kellar,  must  obviously  belong  to 
this  type.  The  celebrated  "  Franz  "  case  is  a  good  illustration  of 
the  point  in  question.  Dr.  Franz,  the  surgeon  who  so  skillfully 
treated  the  young  man,  satisfied  himself,  by  experiments,  that 
the  patient  could  not  in  the  least  discern  objects  by  sight.  "  My 
experiments  led  me  to  the  conclusion  that  his  belief  that  hereally 
saw  objects  resulted  solely  from  his  imagination,  combined  with 
his  power  of  reasoning.  In  feeling  of  an  object  and  bringing  it 
in  contact  with  the  eyelids  and  the  cheek,  an  idea  of  the  object 
was  produced,  which  was  judged  of  and  corrected  according  to 
the  experience  he  had  gained  by  constant  practice.  .  .  .  The 
patient's  sense  of  touch  has  attained  an  extraordinary  degree  of 
perfection.  In  order  to  examine  an  object  minutely  he  conveyed 
it  to  his  lips.  .  .  .  When  made  to  see  by  the  removal  of  the 
cataracts  from  off  his  eyes  and  shown  geometric  figures,  he  said 
he  had  not  been  able  to  form  from  these  figures,  the  idea  of  a 
square  and  a  disk  until  he  perceived  a  sensation  of  what  he  saw 
in  the  points  of  his  fingers,  as  if  he  really  touched  the  objects." 

We  are  all  able  to  reproduce  images  of  previous  touch  sensa- 
tions with  more  or  less  vividness.  The  dry-goods  merchant  is 
rather  dependent  upon  the  "feel"  of  the  goods  in  trying  to  dis- 
criminate among  fabrics  as  to  the  quality  of  their  texture.  The 
blind  student  in  my  class  who  writes  his  examination  paper  by 
means  of  an  ingeniously  constructed  typewriter,  in  relying  upon 
the  touch  of  the  keys,  is  quite  largely  dependent  upon  his  tactile 
images.  Likewise  when  he  reads  from  his  books  in  which  the 
characters  are  represented  by  "raised  letters." 

At  the  World's  Fair  in  my  little  laboratory  I  made  a  series  of 
tests  upon  all  visitors  who  were  willing  to  submit  to  them,  and 
found  enormous  differences  with  reference  to  the  reproduction 
of  tactile  images.  Of  course,  experience  and  training  have  every- 


280  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

thing  to  do  with  reference  to  the  development  of  this  capacity 
within  us. 

2.  The  Visual  Type.  The  mass  of  people  belong  to  this  class. 
With  the  large  majority  of  persons  visual  images  predominate  in 
their  thinking.  This  is  probably  the  reason  that  most  people  prize 
the  eye  above  all  the  other  senses.  This  you  know  to  be  actually 
the  case.  Ask  your  pupils  which  sense  they  prize  most  highly, 
and  I  think  they  will  be  quick  to  tell  you  that  it  is  the  sense  of 
vision.  This  expression  of  popular  opinion  finds  support  in  the 
words  of  Henry  D.  Thoreau,  "the  poet  naturalist,"  who  says: 
"  The  eye  does  the  least  drudgery  of  any  of  the  senses.  It  often- 
est  escapes  to  a  higher  employment.  The  rest  serve  to  escort 
and  defend  it.  I  attach  some  superiority,  even  priority,  to  this 
sense.  It  is  the  oldest  servant  in  the  soul's  household.  ...  If 
any  joy  or  grief  is  to  be  expressed,  the  eye  carries  the  news.  .  .  . 
How  man  serves  this  sense  more  than  any  other ! " 

There  are,  of  course,  among  this  class— the  visual  type— very 
great  individual  differences,  varying  from  the  visualizing  power 
possessed  by  the  ordinary  pupil,  who  can  learn  his  lesson  of  a 
series  of  words  easier  by  seeing  them  than  by  hearing  them,  to 
the  prodigy  among  the  artists  who  paints  his  portraits  from 
ideally  visualized  subjects. 

Professor  James  clearly  illustrates  these  individual  differences 
by  two  cases  which  are  gleaned  from  reports  made  by  students  of 
his  class  in  Psychology,  in  response  to  his  inquiry  as  to  their 
mental  image  of  the  morning's  breakfast  table.  The  one  who  is 
a  good  visualizer  says:  "This  morning's  breakfast  table  is  both 
dim  and  bright;  it  is  dim  if  I  try  to  think  of  it  when  my  eyes  are 
open  upon  any  object;  it  is  perfectly  clear  and  bright  if  I  think 
of  it  with  my  eyes  closed.  All  the  objects  are  clear  at  once,  yet 
when  I  confine  my  attention  to  any  one  object  it  becomes  far 
more  distinct.  I  have  more  power  to  recall  color  than  any  one 
thing;  if,  for  example,  I  were  to  recall  a  plate  decorated  with 
flowers,  I  could  reproduce  in  a  drawing  the  exact  tone,  etc.  The 
color  of  anything  that  was  on  the  table  is  perfectly  vivid.  There 
is  very  little  limitation  to  the  extent  of  my  images;  I  can  see  all 


IMAGINATION.  281 

four  sides  of  a  room ;  I  can  see  all  four  sides  of  two,  three,  four, 
even  more  rooms  with  such  distinctness  that  if  you  should  ask 
me  what  was  in  any  particular  place  in  any  one,  or  ask  me  to 
count  the  chairs,  etc.,  I  could  do  it  without  the  least  hesitation. 
The  more  I  learn  by  heart  the  more  clearly  do  I  see  images  of  my 
pages.  Even  before  I  can  recite  the  lines  I  see  them  so  that  I 
could  give  them  very  slowly  word  for  word,  but  my  mind  is  so 
occupied  in  looking  at  my  printed  image  that  I  have  no  idea  of 
what  I  am  saying,  of  the  sense  of  it,  etc.  When  I  first  found  my- 
self doing  this  I  used  to  think  it  was  because  I  knew  the  lines  im- 
perfectly ;  but  I  have  convinced  myself  that  I  really  do  see  an 
image.  The  strongest  proof  that  such  is  really  the  fact  is  that  I 
can  look  down  the  mentally  seen  page  and  see  the  words  that 
commence  all  the  lines,  and  from  one  of  these  words  I  can  con- 
tinue the  line.  I  find  this  much  easier  to  do  if  the  words  begin  in 
a  straight  line  than  if  there  are  breaks." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  poor  visualizer  says:  "My  ability  to 
form  mental  images  seems,  from  what  I  have  studied  of  other 
people's  images,  to  be  defective  and  somewhat  peculiar.  The  pro- 
cess by  which  I  seem  to  remember  any  particular  event  is  not  by 
a  series  of  distinct  images,  but  a  sort  of  panorama,  the  faintest 
impressions  of  which  are  perceptible  through  a  thick  fog.  I  can- 
not shut  my  eyes  and  get  a  distinct  image  of  any  one,  although 
I  used  to  be  able  to  a  few  years  ago,  and  the  faculty  seems  to 
have  gradually  slipped  away.  In  my  most  vivid  dreams,  where 
the  events  appear  like  the  most  real  facts,  I  am  often  troubled 
with  a  dimness  of  sight  which  causes  the  images  to  appear  indis- 
tinct. To  come  to  the  question  of  the  breakfast  table,  there  is 
nothing  definite  about  it.  Everything  is  vague.  I  cannot  say 
what  I  see.  I  could  not  possibly  count  the  chairs,  but  I  happen 
to  know  that  there  are  ten.  I  see  nothing  in  detail.  The  chief 
thing  is  a  general  impression  that  I  cannot  tell  exactly  what  I  do 
see.  The  coloring  is  about  the  same,  as  far  as  I  can  recall  it,  only 
very  much  washed  out.  Perhaps  the  only  color  I  can  see  distinctly 
is  that  of  the  table-cloth,  and  I  could  probably  see  the  color  of 
the  wall  paper  if  I  could  remember  what  color  it  was." 


282  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Fechner,  in  his  pioneer  book,  Elemente  der  Psychophysik,  was, 
in  all  probability,  the  first  to  call  attention  to  these  personal 
differences  with  respect  to  the  power  of  visual  imagination.  His 
published  accounts  show  great  individual  diversity.  The  work  of 
gathering  a  large  fund  of  information  capable  of  being  reduced 
to  statistical  form,  anticipated  by  Fechner,  has  been  admirably 
carried  out  by  Francis  Galton,  the  English  psychologist,  who  first 
published  his  results  in  1880. 

Among  other  things  Galton  found  that  the  great  majority  of 
men  of  science  were  very  deficient  in  visualizing  power.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  he  made  inquiries  among  people  met  with  in 
general  society,  he  found  quite  a  different  state  of  affairs.  "  Many 
men,  and  a  yet  larger  number  of  women,  and  many  boys  and 
girls,  declared  they  habitually  saw  mental  imagery,  and  that  it 
was  perfectly  distinct  to  them  and  full  of  color.  The  more  I 
pressed  and  cross-questioned  them,  the  more  obvious  was  the 
truth  of  their  first  assertions.  They  described  their  imagery  in 
minute  detail,  and  then  spoke  in  a  tone  of  apparent  surprise  at 
my  hesitation  in  accepting  what  they  said.  I  felt  that  I  myself 
should  have  spoken  exactly  as  they  did,  if  I  had  been  describ- 
ing a  scene  that  lay  before  my  eyes,  to  a  blind  man  who  persisted 
in  doubting  the  reality  of  vision." 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  sharp  sight  and  good  visualiz- 
ing power  go  together.  The  two  faculties  are  quite  independent 
of  each  other.  Galton  tells  us  of  persons  who  read  their  addresses 
from  mentally  seen  manuscripts..  You  may  have  had  pupils  who 
could  recite  their  lessons  when  told  on  what  page  and  the  por- 
tion of  the  page  the  topic,  concerning  which  your  question  dealt, 
was  treated  and  discussed.  Some  persons  see  mentally  in  print, 
every  word  as  it  is  uttered,  and  they  read  off  the  address  from  the 
imagined  printed  page  instead  of  attending  to  the  sound  of  the 
words  as  spoken.  Galton  also  found  the  power  of  visualizing 
more  highly  developed  in  the  female  sex  than  in  the  male,  and  that 
it  is  somewhat  higher  in  schoolboys  than  in  men.  There  is  strong 
reason  to  support  the  belief  that  it  is  very  high  in  some  young 
children.  Language  and  book-learning  tend  to  dull  this  power. 


IMAGINATION.  283 

Margaret  Whiting  in  a  recent  article*  makes  an  interesting 
confession  of  her  own  early  childhood  experiences  with  the  arith- 
metical tables  of  addition  and  multiplication.  These  notions 
concern  the  individuality  of  numbers  and  began  when  she  was 
about  eight  years  of  age,  when  arithmetic  first  became  known  as 
a  study.  Belief  in  these  notions  was  held  without  question  for  at 
least  four  years.  In  her  descriptive  list  she  characterizes  the 
various  numerals  as  follows: 

"  1,  2,  and  3  were  children,  4  was  a  woman,  a  good,  self-sacri- 
ficing woman,  who  always  reminded  me  of  Edna  Kenderdine  in 
'A  Woman's  Kingdom.' 

"5  was  a  mischievous  young  scamp,  with  animal  spirits,  a 
capacity  for  getting  into  scrapes,  and  luck  in  getting  out  of  them. 

11  6  was  a  prince,  amiable  and  possessed  of  very  good  manners, 
easily  cheated  by  impostors,  weak  and  dependent. 

"  7  was  an  arrant  rogue,  full  of  schemes  for  his  own  advantage, 
without  regard  to  others.  (A  character  so  unscrupulous  that  I 
always  considered  him  too  bad  for  general  society.) 

"  8  was  a  lady,  high-born  and  haughty,  gracious  to  the  unfor- 
tunate, severe  to  all  offenders,  a  musician,  and  in  all  ways  ac- 
complished ;  by  far  the  most  distinguished  of  the  company. 

"  9  was  reckless  but  generous,  always  helpful  to  others,  always 
disregardful  of  self.  He  was  very  tall  and  walked  so  carelessly 
that  he  often  stubbed  his  toe. 

"10  was  a  great  lord,  cold  and  formal.  He  took  the  places 
assigned  him  as  his  right,  was  too  elevated  in  station  to  help 
or  hinder  the  other  people. 

"  11  was  the  herald  of  the  King.  He  ran  before  12  and  pre- 
pared the  way  for  royalty.  He  was  very  clever,  and  was 
always  busy. 

11 12  was  the  King.  He  was  merely  a  majestic  figure-head ;  and 
noticed  only  those  who  had  climbed  near  the  throne. 

' '  The  first  move  of  interest  in  this  drama  of  numbers  was  caused 
by  5  when  he  coaxed  an  innocent  child  to  help  him  run  away 
from  home.  5  runs  till  he  reaches  10,  but  before  he  gets  there  he 

"  The  Pedagogical  Seminary,"  June,  1892. 


284  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

stops  to  help  6.  5  cannot  put  6  into  12  where  he  wanted  to  go, 
and  so  drops  him  next  door  to  12.  Though  good-natured,  5  is 
easily  moved , by  wickedness,  and  so  is  persuaded  by  the  design; 
ing  7  to  help  him  instead  of  6,  into  12.  At  this,  8  is  so  angry 
that  she  thrusts  thoughtless  5  into  13.  Here  he  stays  till  kind 
9  rescues  him  and  puts  him  into  14.  2  helps  6  into  12,  but  he 
cannot  stay,  for  7  is  already  there  and  the  place  is  not  large 
enough  to  hold  both.  7  is  stronger  than  6,  and  so  succeeds  in 
putting  the  unfortunate  prince  into  13,  which  is  a  mild  prison. 
8,  bent  on  justice,  finds  6,  who  is  crying,  but  doing  nothing 
to  get  into  a  better  place;  she  puts  him  into  14,  which  is  very 
pleasant,  but  beneath  6's  dignity.  7  is  already  in  14  by  the 
aid  of  2.  8  turns  out  7,  and  hurls  him  into  15,  which  was  a 
dungeon." 

And  so  on  this  drama  is  carried  out,  until  the  combinations 
become  almost  innumerable.  These  true  memories  are  said  to  be 
"  more  clear  to-day  than  the  faces  of  early  playmates." 

Of  course,  such  a  marked  degree  of  the  power  of  visual  imagin- 
ation is  indeed  rare,  and  yet  it  is  more  common  among  children 
than  one  would  be  apt  to  think.  George  Sand,  in  recalling  her 
childhood  experiences,  supplies  us  with  a  good  example  by  way 
of  illustration.  She  also  retained  this  power  to  quite  an  extent  in 
later  life.  "I  never  look  at  certain  mosses  in  my  herbarium, "she 
says,  "  without  findingmyself  again  under  the  oaks  of  Frascati. 
A  little  stone  makes  me  see  again  all  the  mountain  from  which  I 
brought  it,  and  recall  the  same  with  all  the  minutest  detail  from 
top  to  bottom.  The  odor  of  the  liseron  vrille  [bindweed]  makes 
a  terrible  Spanish  landscape  appear  before  me,  of  which  I  know 
neither  the  name  nor  the  location ;  but  which  I  passed  by  with 
my  mother  at  the  age  of  four."  Gustave  Dore  said,  "My  mind 
is  my  model  for  everything."  A  still  more  interesting  case  is  that 
related  by  one  of  the  pupils  of  Worcester  Normal  School,  of  her  own 
childhood.  "As  a  rule,"  she  says,  "  I  preferred  story  books  which 
were  not  illustrated.  This  was  because  the  illustrations  were 
not  so  beautiful  as  the  pictures  which  came  into  my  mind  while 
listening  to,  or  reading  a  story.  I  used  to  turn  the  pages  over 


IMAGINATION.  285 

quickly,  or  if  there  was  print  above  and  below  the  picture,  I  used 
to  hold  ray  hand  over  the  picture  so  that  it  could  not  blot  out 
the  one  in  my  mind." 

3.  The  Auditory  Type.  — This  type  is  not  near  so  common  as 
the  visual  type;  yet  there  are  many  poor  visualizers  who  seem  to 
have  extremely  good  auditory  memories.    Many  musicians  seem 
to  belong  to  this  type— those  who  sing  or  play  "  by  ear."    It  is 
said  that  Mozart  at  the  age  o!  fourteen^  after  hearing  Allegri's 
Miserere  for  a  single  time,  as  he  was  forbidden  by  the  popes  to 
copy  it,  reproduced  the  entire  work  from  memory.     Professor 
iStumpf  informs  us  of  a  °<hild  that  could  follow  the  scale  in  singing 
at  the  extremely  early  age  of  fourteen  months. 

The  difference  between  the  auditory  and  visual  types  is  well 
shown  in  the  little  anecdote,  told  by  Bernard,  of  Legouve  and 
Scribe.  "  When  I  writeascene,"  said  Legouve  to  Scribe,  "  I  hear; 
but  you  see.  In  each  phrase  that  I  write,  the  voice  of  the  per- 
sonage who  speaks  strikes  my  ears.  Your  actors  walk ;  they 
gesticulate  before  your  eyes;  I  am  a  listener,  you  a  spectator." 
''Nothing  is  more  true,"  said  Scribe  ;  " do  you  know  where  I  am 
when  I  write  a  piece?  In  the  middle  of  the  parterre." 

To  one  whose  mind  revels  in  auditory  images  it  is  no  diffi- 
cult matter  to  perform  what  would  otherwise  be  remarkable 
feats  of  memory  of  sounds,  as  in  the  example  of  Mozart  cited 
above. 

4.  The  Motor  Type.— With  persons  of  this  type  the  mind  in  its 
operation  deals  chiefly  with  the  images  of  muscular  sensations. 
All  of  us  are  quite  dependent  upon  our  motor  images,  especially 
in  the  common  habitual  movements  involved  in  utterance,  walk- 
ing and  the  like.    These  simple  movements  would  be  quiteimpos- 
sible  without  these  motor  clues,  as  pathology  makes  plain  to  us. 
When  the  images  of  certain  movements  are  destroyed,  the  pa- 
tient can  no  longer  execute   those   movements,  for  example, 
aphasia,  agraphia,  and  the  like.    This  is  the  reason  that  sensory 
paralysis  is  always  followed  by  motor  paralysis. 

The  blind  depend  quite  largely  upon  their  motor  images. 
When  engaged  in  reflection,  all  alone  by  themselves,  they  have 


286  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

been  observed  to  spell  out  their  thoughts  with  the  finger  alpha 
bet.  Berthier,  the  deaf-mute,  made  such  a  confession  of  his  own 
operations  wxhen  he  says,  "  Although  my  fingers  and  my  hande 
are  immovable,  I  feel,  when  I  think,  that  they  are  in  activity.  I 
see  internally  the  image  that  they  produce.  I  feel  that  my 
thought  exercises  itself  and  Identifies  itself  with  these  movements 
which  the  external  eyes  do  not  see." 

Professor  Strieker,  of  Vienna,  has  this  form  of  imagination 
(motor)  developed  to  a  remarka.ble  degree,  and  which  he  himself 
has  carefully  studied  and  fully  described. 

His  recollections  both  of  his  own  movements  and  those  of  ob- 
jects are  accompanied,  invariably,  by  distinct  muscular  feelings 
in  those  parts  of  .his  own  body  which  would  -naturally  be  used  in 
effecting  or  following  the  movement.  In  thinking  of  a  soldier 
marching,  for  example,  it  is  as  if  he  were  helping  the  image  to 
march,  by  marching  himself  in  his  rear.  And  if  he  suppresses  this 
sympathetic  feeling  in  his  own  legs,  and  concentrates  all  his  at- 
tention on  the  imagined  soldier,  the  latter  becomes,  as  it  were, 
paralyzed.  In  general  his  imagined  movements,  of  whatsoever 
objects,  seem  paralyzed  the  moment  no  feelings  of  movement 
either  in  his  own  eyes  or  in  his  own  limbs  accompany  them.  The 
movements  of  articulate  speech  play  a  predominant  part  in  his 
mental  life.  "  When  after  my  experimental  work  I  proceed  to  its 
description,"  he  writes,  "as  a  rule  I  reproduce  in  the  first  in- 
stance only  words,  which  I  had  already  associated  with  the  per- 
ception of  the  various  details  of  the  observation,  while  the  latter 
was  going  on.  For  speech  plays,  in  all  my  observing,  so  impor- 
tant a  part  that  I  ordinarily  clothe  phenomena  in  words  as  fast 
as  I  observe  them." 

If  you  should  inquire  among  persons  as  to  the  sort  of  terms 
in  which  they  imagine  words,  most  of  them  will  reply  "712  terms 
of  hearing."  Not  until  you  draw  their  attention  to  the  matter 
will  they  see  that  the  motor  images  connected  with  the  organs  of 
articulation  predominate.  A  good  way  of  clearing  up  the 
matter  to  them,  is  to  try  the  method  suggested  by  Professor 
Strieker.  "  Partly  open  your  mouth  and  then  imagine  any  word 


IMAGINATION.  287 

with  labials  or  dentals  in  it,  such  as  'bubble,'  *  toddle.'  Is  your 
image  of  the  word  under  these  conditions  distinct?  To  most 
people  such  an  image  is  at  first  thick,  just  as  the  sound  of  the 
word  would  be,  if  they  tried  to  utter  it  with  the  lips  parted. 
Many  can  never  imagine  the  words  clearly  with  the  mouth  open; 
others  succeed  after  a  few  preliminary  trials."  Such  an  experi- 
ment proves  how  dependent  our  imagination  of  words  is  upon 
the  actual  feelings  in  lips,  tongue,  throat  and  larynx.  Professor 
Bain  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  "  a  suppressed  articulation  is  in 
/act  the  material  of  our  recollection,  the  intellectual  manifestion, 
the  idea  of  speech." 

So  then  we  really  have  at  least  four  general  types  of  reproduc- 
tive imagination— the  tactile,  visual,  auditory  and  motor.  In 
every  person  one  of  these  types  is  more  highly  developed  than 
are  all  the  others.  But  this  extreme  development  does  not  of 
necessity  exclude  the  presence  of,  and  a  dependence  upon,  the 
others.  In  the  normal  individual  all  these  types  are  developed. 
We  use  the  visual  power  to  retain  what  has  been  learned  by  read- 
ing; the  auditory  power  to  retain  what  has  been  gained  by  hear- 
ing, and  the  muscular  or  motor  memory  to  retain  what  has 
been  committed  by  recitation.  Then  in  the  normal  type  the  re- 
produced images  are  sometimes  visual,  sometimes  motor,  some- 
times auditory  and  sometimes  tactile.  We  all  know  how  very 
different  reading  a  foreign  language  is  from  speaking  it.  For 
three  years  before  I  went  to  Germany,  I  read  some  German  every 
day,  but  never  spoke  a  word  until  I  had  actually  set  foot  on  the 
goil  of  the  Fatherland.  A  stock  of  visual  images  I  found  quite 
different  from  the  motor  images,  and  both  of  these  very  different 
from  the  auditory  images.  For  I  could  read  and  speak  German 
before  I  could  understand  it  when  spoken  by  others.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  have  a  friend  who  in  the  reading  of  German  is  quite 
dependent  upon  his  stock  of  auditory  images.  He  understands 
German  well  when  he  reads  it  aloud,  but  if  he  reads  it  silently  he 
experiences  great  difficulty.  You  frequently  notice  old  people  who 
continually  move  their  lips  when  reading  mentally,  just  as  they 
would  move  them  when  reading  aloud.  In  some  schools  and  with 


288  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

some  children,  it  is  quite  a  difficult  matter  to  get  the  pupils  to 
study  without  moving  their  lips. 

We  now  qome  to  speak  of  the  constructive,  reproductive,  or 
creative  imagination.  I  think  teachers,  as  a  rule,  are  apt  to 
underestimate  the  importance  of  this  creative  faculty.  "  With- 
out imagination,"  says  Goodwin,  "therecan  beno  genuine  ardor 
in  any  pursuit,  or  for  any  acquisition ;  and  without  imagination 
there  can  be  no  genuine  morality,  no  profound  feeling  of  other 
men's  sorrows,  no  ardent  and  persevering  anxiety  for  their 
interests." 

The  constructive  or  creative  imagination  may  assume  at  least 
three  forms  under  which  to  manifest  itself.  These  may  be  crudely 
styled:  (1)  The  intellectual  imagination;  (2)  the  practical  im- 
agination —  the  adapting  of  means  to  ends;  (3)  the  artistic  or 
poetic  imagination. 

Intellectual  Imagination.  —  Every  extension  of  our  knowledge 
beyond  the  domain  of  personal  experience  and  observation,  in- 
volves some  degree  of  imaginative  activity.  The  old  principle,  so 
often  voiced  in  our  ears,  that  we  must  proceed  from  the  known  to 
the  unknown,  depends,  in  its  practical  application,  upon  the  ex- 
tent to  which  the  imaginative  faculty  is  exercised.  In  the  acquisi- 
tion of  new  knowledge,  every  person  is  dependent  upon  this  power, 
whether  the  knowledge  be  of  objects,  persons,  places  or  events. 
It  is  especially  true  in  the  discovery  of  new  facts  by  anticipation. 
To  illustrate  the  latter  case,  take  the  work  of  the  astronomer  in 
his  calculation  of  the  time  of  eclipses  so  long  beforehand,  or  the 
position  of  the  planets  on  certain  dates. 

With  reference  to  the  use  of  imagination  in  acquisition,  the 
general  statement  may  be  made  that  the  process  of  recalling, 
selecting,  and  regrouping  the  traces  of  personal  experience,  as 
applied  to  the  new  facts  presented,  is  illustrated  in  every  act  by 
means  of  which  knowledge  is  gained.  Imagination  as  well  as 
memory  is  involved  in  every  act  called  "  learning,"  whether  this 
learning  be  by  oral  communication  or  by  books.  If  you  wish  to 
realize  the  meaning  of  a  word  you  must  form  clear  and  keen  men- 
tal images  of  the  objects  and  events  indicated  by  the  word.  Thus 


IMAGINATION.  289 

in  following  the  account  of  a  battle,  the  child  begins  with  his  own 
limited  experiences  called  up  by  the  words  involved  in  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  battle-scene. 

Have  you  ever  seriously  thought  of  the  actual  fact  that  what 
is  known  as  understanding  a  teacher's  description,  depends  to  a 
great  extent  upon  the  success  of  the  pupil's  imaginative  effort? 
For  example,  you  are  describing  an  ocean  steamer  to  your  class 
of  young  pupils,  and  they  fail  to  comprehend  (or  image)  its  mag- 
nitude ;  how  can  you  expect  them  to  realize  the  functions  per- 
formed by  ocean  steamers  in  commercial  navigation?  If  you  are 
describing  a  fort,  such  as  existed  during  the  time  of  the  "  French 
and  Indian  Wars,"  and  you  fail  to  make  clear  to  their  minds  the 
necessity  of  such  a  protection,  how  can  you  expect  them  to  ap- 
preciate the  difference  between  a  fort  made  of  logs  and  stones,  and 
one  whose  walls  were  simply  piles  of  crumbling  earth?  Ever  and 
always  must  our  educational  methods  take  cognizance  of  the 
fact,  that  there  is  a  close  relation  between  clear  imagination  and 
clear  thinking. 

Again,  in  all  discovery  of  new  facts  we  find  that  the  processes 
of  simple  observation  are  greatly  assisted  by  the  imagination. 
The  scientific  student  must  ever  invent  hypotheses  for  the  ex- 
planation of  facts.  In  this  he  is  aided  by  the  imagination, for  his 
hypothesis  stands  or  falls  upon  the,  as  yet  unobserved,  results, 
which  results  he  must  picture  as  fast  as  possible  beforehand.  The 
chemist  must  picture  to  his  mind  the  action  of  certain  substances 
on  each  other,  before  he  can  assure  you  or  even  himself  of  the 
nature  of  the  compound  produced  by  their  being  mixed  together. 
Practical  Imagination. —  But  more  clear,  perhaps,  is  the  part 
played  by  the  imagination  in  the  practical  line  of  invention  of 
the  various  mechanical  devices  which  have  proved  such  a  blessing 
to  our  generation  in  the  development  of  our  natural  resources. 
Robert  Fulton  pictured  to  his  mind  the  advantages  of  a  steam- 
boat before  he  ever  attempted  its  construction.  Could  Morse 
have  worked  so  assiduously,  against  such  discouragements,  in 
his  endeavors  to  perfect  the  telegraph,  had  it  not  been  for  the 
picture  of  the  enormous  convenience  the  now  indispensable  tele- 

L.  P.-19 


290  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

graph  would  prove  to  the  world  ?  That  picture  was  supplied  by 
the  creative  imagination.  It  was  the  same  thing  that  raised 
Edison  from  the  humble  position  of  a  telegraph  messenger  to 
that  of  the  foremost  inventor  of  the  world.  When  a  poor  man, 
a  few  years  ago,  he  suggested  that  a  means  could  be  contrived 
whereby  a  message  could  be  sent  and  received  over  the  same  wire 
at  the  same  time.  He  was  laughed  to  scorn  by  his  fellow  work- 
men. But  the  cherished  image  remained  in  his  mind,  and  as  a 
result  of  that  mental  picture  which  was  stereotyped  on  Edison's 
brain  we  have  the  "Duplex"  key  now  a'dopted  into  general  use 
in  telegraphic  service.  The  projector  of  the  "  Ferris  Wheel," 
which  is  one  of  the  greatest  engineering  feats  of  modern  times, 
was  laughed  at  and  regarded  as  crazy  by  many  whom  he  ap- 
proached with  his  plans.  The  evolution  from  the  sickle  to  the 
"  self-binder,"  in  harvesting  grain,  is  the  result  of  the  acts  of  the 
creative  imagination.  Every  invention,  whether  it  be  of  a  useful 
mechanical  contrivance  that  has  blessed  the  world,  or  some  ar- 
tistic design  that  has  made  men  appreciate  the  beautiful — every 
single  invention  finds  its  genesis  in  the  imagination  of  some 
individual. 

It  is  in  a  sense  fortunate  that  children  possess  this  imagina- 
tive faculty  to  such  a  degree.  That  they  do  possess  this  power 
is  seen  so  plainly  in  their  plays  and  games.  I  have  seen  children 
in  playing,  use  as  dolls  such  various  articles  as  a  stick  of  wood,  a 
knife,  a  clothes-pin,  a  newspaper,  an  ear  of  corn,  and  a  milk  can. 
You  remember  the  remark  of  Budge  in  "  Helen's  Babies,"  who 
said  "We  doesn't  like  buyed  dolls."  A  wax  doll  with  flaxen  curls 
is  a  fine  thing  to  have  laid  away  in  the  bureau  drawer — to  look 
at  semi-occasionally ;  but  for  good,  rollicking,  genuine,  every-day 
fun  the  child  chooses  the  old  rag  doll.  A  toy  is  not  something  to 
look  at  and  observe  merely,  but  it  must  admit  of  being  done 
something  with;  the  more  possibilities  that  the  toy  offers  in  this 
line  the  better  toy  it  is. 

Likewise  in  their  attributing  personality  to  inanimate  objects. 
A  little  boy  eighteen  months  old  tried  to  make  his  doll  eat  bread 
and  cried  when  he  found  it  could  not  be  made  to  eat.  Children 


IMAGINATION.  291 

love  to  think  of  their  toys  and  of  other  objects,  as  living  things. 
Mr.  Russell  reports  the  case  of  little  Hildur,  a  child  aged  one 
year,  seven  months.  "  Just  as  Mrs.  L.  brought  Hildur  in,  J  acci- 
dentally knocked  a  chair  down  on  the  floor.  Hildur  began  to  cry, 
and  when  I  called  her  she  did  not  move.  I  went  towards  her,  at 
the  same  time  picking  up  the  chair.  She  ceased  crying  as  soon  as 
the  chair  had  been  picked  up.  About  ten  minutes  later,  I  put  the 
chair  down  on  the  floor  again,  and  as  soon  as  she  saw  it,  she 
began  to  cry,  and  when  I  picked  it  up,  she  stopped. " 

That  children  attribute  sensibility  to  objects,  especially  a 
capacity  for  suffering,  is  quite  a  well-known  fact.  I  remember  well, 
a  little  boy  who  wanted  his  mamma  to  whip  the  wind  for  blow- 
ing his  hat  off.  My  own  little  girl  has  often  asked  me  on  seeing 
me  light  the  open  fire  in  the  grate,  "  Papa,  don't  it  burn  the  fire 
and  hurt  it  when  you  make  it  blaze  so  ?  " 

The  average  child  seems  to  live  half  his  life  in  a  world  of  make- 
believe.  How  often  do  we  hear  children  say  to  each  other,  "  Play 
you  were  so-and-so,"  or  suchreinarks  as  "I'll  be  thepapaand  you 
be  the  mamma,  Mary  will  be  the  hired  girl  and  the  rest  will  be  the 
ladies  who  came  to  seeus."  And  the  imaged  objects  are  to  thechild 
real  objects.  Not  long  ago  my  liftle  girl  was  playing  Sunday- 
school,  laying  especial  stresson  instrumental  musicand  "thecol- 
lection"  as  the  more  important  features  of  the  ideal  Sunday-school. 
She  was  using  a  chair  for  her  piano,  and  while  she  was  out  of  the 
room  for  a  moment  her  mamma  sat  down  in  this  self-samechair, 
without  thinkingof  its  newly  assigned  function.  Gretchen,  on  com- 
ing into  the  room,  noticing  her  mamma  seated  in  this  particular 
chair,  exclaimed  in  apainfulway,  "Oh  mamma, you  are  sitting  on 
the  piano!"  Again,  one  day  she  and  herbrother  Stuart  were  play- 
ing that  they  were  keeping  house.  Gretchen  was  the  "  mamma," 
and  Stuart  the  "  papa."  When  called  to  luncheon  Gretchen  got 
to  the  wash  pan  first  and  was  preparing  herself  for  dinner,  at  the 
same  time  teasing  her  brother  with  the  thought  that  she  was 
going  to  beat  him  to  the  table.  Stuart  burst  out  crying  with 
the  exclamation  —  < '  Oh,  Gretchen  won't  *et '  papa '  (meaning  him- 
self) have  the  basin." 


292  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Many  children  seem  to  actually  believe  that  it  pains  flowers  to 
tear  or  burn  them,  that  in  the  summer  when  the  tree  is  alive  it 
makes  it  aehe  to  chop  or  pound  it.  Thunder,  which  is  an  unac- 
countable mystery  in  the  child  world,  is  said  by  some  children  to 
be  God  " groaning"  or  "kicking."  Others  say  that  it  is  caused 
by  God  "rolling  barrels  about,"  "turning  a  big  handle," 
"throwing  logs,"  "having  coal  run  in,"  "hitting  the  clouds," 
or  by  the  clouds  "  bumping  together."  Most  of  children's  fancies 
seem  to  cluster  about  the  sky,  sun,  moon  and  stars. 

When  the  dew  is  on  the  grass  the  child  says,  "  The  grass  is  cry- 
ing; "  when  the  stars  come  out  they  are  "candles"  or  "street 
lamps  lighted  by  angel  boys,"  or  they  are  "sparks  from  fire-en- 
gines," or  "  cinders  from  God's  stove."  Butterflies  are  conceived 
by  some  to  be"pansies  flying,"  and  others  call  icicles  "  Christ- 
mas candy." 

Play  offers  a  wide  scope  for  the  child's  practical  ingenuity. 
Play  owes  its  chief  charm  to  mimicry  and  a  kind  of  make-believe 
of  the  action  of  adults.  Much  childish  play  owes  its  charm  to  a 
sort  of  partial  self-deception.  Children  imagine  or  make  believe 
they  are  animals,  soldiers,  Indians,  hunters  and  veritable  Davy 
Crocketts,  Daniel  Boones  arid  Buffalo  Bills.  They  play  church, 
school,  circus  or  congress.  If  hit  with  imaginary  bullets  from  im- 
aginary guns  they  fall  down  and  play  they  are  dead.  If  they  step 
on  a  crack  when  walking  on  the  sidewalk,  they  are  "going  to 
have  bad  luck"  or  are  "poisoned."  What  child  has  not  played 
with  mud  pies,  moss  carpets,  brooms  made  of  pine  tufts,  cucum- 
ber pigs  and  horses  with  eyes  of  tacks,  or  a  train  of  cars  made  of 
chairs?  All  this  is  done  by  the  "  alchemy  of  the  imagination." 
Only  a  rough  basis  of  analogy  is  needed  for  these  creations  of 
fancy.  A  boy  will  derive  as  much  and  even  more  pleasure  from 
riding  a  stick  as  he  will  from  possessing  the  most  richly  capari- 
soned hobby-horse. 

This  same  imaginative  exuberance  manifests  itself  in  another 
form.  A  child  who  has  heard  a  number  of  stories  will  display 
great  activity  and  ingenuity  in  inventing  new  ones.  This  free, 
spontaneous  fancy  is  apt  to  assume  extravagant  shapes  and  ex- 


IMAGINATION.  293 

aggerated  colorings.  Thus  one  teacher  reports  that  Alfred,  aged 
six,  "was  dining  at  our  house  to-night.  During  dinner  one  of 
the  company  told  of  a  horse-chestnut  tree  that  had  red  blossoms. 
My  father  said  he  never  heard  of  red  blossoms  on  a  horse-chestnut 
tree  before,  and  wanted  to  know  on  what  street  it  was.  On  hearing 
this  A.  said,  « My  teacher  told  us  to-day  of  an  apple  tree  and  the 
blossoms  on  it  were  blue.'  He  was  asked, 'Did  your  teacher  tell  you 
where  it  could  be  seen?'  A.  answered,  'Yes,  but  it's  down  on  Winter 
street  in  Boston,  so  you  can't  see  it.'  My  father  said  it  would  be 
worth  while  to  go  to  Boston  just  to  see  that  tree,  and  he  thought 
he  could  see  it  when  he  went  on  Wednesday,  since  he  knew  what 
street  it  was  on.  A.  did  not  say  anything  for  quite  awhile,  and 
then  he  suddenly  spoke  up,  remarking, '  I  forgot  to  tell  you  that 
a  storm  knocked  all  the  blossoms  off  that  apple  tree,  so  I  don't 
think  you  can  see  it." 

Children  are  apt  to  find  great  excitement  in  the  marvelous,  and 
they  delight  in  turn  to  excite  others.  This  frequently  leads  them 
to  tell  their  grotesque  stories  surcharged  with  everything  but 
truth.  "To  fly  up  to  the  sky"  is  not  an  impossible  act  for  the 
average  child  to  perform. 

The  indulgence  in  these  pleasures  of  fancy  and  the  imagination 
involves  certain  risks  if  entirely  uncontrolled.  It  is,  however,  legiti- 
mate within  certain  bounds  and  should  be  stimulated,  in  a  large 
measure,  in  early  childhood.  In  later  youth  the  exaggerated  ex- 
ercise of  this  power  may  involve  dangers,  both  moral  and  intel- 
lectual. The  child  that  lives  always  in  the  world  of  wonderland, 
and  dwells  continually  on  the  romantic  figures  clothed  by  the 
imagination,  may  be  unable  at  the  proper  time,  to  adjust  himself 
to  actual  surroundings,  and  he  will  naturally  grow  discontented 
with  the  world  as  it  is,  continually  chafing  because  out  of  har- 
mony with  life  as  actually  lived. 

Or  such  an  one  may  become  thoroughly  satisfied  with  this 
image  world,  created  by  extensive  and  prolonged  indulgence  of 
the  imagination,  and  in  this  way  be  rendered  incapable  of  dealing 
with  real  objects  as  they  present  themselves  to  his  sensorium. 

Again,  it  can  be  readily  seen,  that  if  the  imaginative  activity 


294  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

is  thus  divorced  from  the  really  fixed  mental  standards  by  which 
the  correctness  of  reasoning  and  other  intellectual  processes  is 
discerned  and  passed  upon  by  the  judgment,  the  attainment  of 
truth  in  all  investigation  and  research  is  hindered.  When  the 
imagination  is  given  over  to  the  sway  of  the  emotions,  rather 
than  to  the  control  and  guidance  of  the  intellect,  the  sway  of  feel- 
ing gives  a  capriciousness  to  the  workings  of  the  imagination, 
rendering  this  creative  power  utterly  unfit  for  the  calm  and 
steady  pursuit  of  truth.  The  student  whose  imagination  obeys 
the  behests  of  feeling  i's  prevented  from  clearly  discriminating 
among  the  facts  he  is  trying  to  investigate  in  an  unbiased  way, 
and  becomes  the  victim  of  vagueness  as  well  as  exaggeration.  In 
evoking  one's  stronger  feelings,  imagination  puts  a  cataract  over 
the  eye  of  judgment,  rendering  the  mind  of  the  student  unfit 
for  cool,  scrutinizing,  careful,  painstaking  investigation  and 
research. 

But  when  properly  guided  the  imagination  is  of  immense  intel- 
lectual value.  It  is,  as  has  already  been  stated,  indispensable  in 
teaching,  in  invention,  in  study,  in  passing  from  the  known  to 
the  unknown.  The  teacher  must  orientate  himself  into  the  child's 
world— put  himself  in  the  child's  place— in  order  to  know  just 
what  sort  of  mental  menu  to  place  before  the  child  —that  he  may 
know  just  what  food  is  best  calculated  for  the  child's  intellect  to 
digest  and  assimilate  at  each  stage  of  development. 

The  ordinary  practical  person  is  apt,  at  first  thought,  to  sneer 
at  the  imagination  as  if  it  were  a  useless  appendage  to  the  mind 
—  a  sort  of  "peacock's  tail  "—beautiful,  brilliant  and  gay,  but 
serving  only  to  retard  the  progress  of  real  mental  growth.  We 
are  quite  apt  to  overlook  the  intellectual  service  rendered  by  this 
faculty  in  the  pursuit  and  acquisition  of  knowledge.  But  a  deep 
look  into  the  mind  as  a  whole,  an  organized  unit,  reveals  to  us 
the  fact  that  the  imagination,  instead  of  being  opposed  and  an- 
tagonistic to  the  intellect,  constitutes  an  essential  factor  in  the 
intellectual  processes  and  in  mental  growth. 

With  the  normal  person,  after  the  early  childish  fancies  have 
been  indulged  for  a  term  of  years,  moderation  comes  of  itself  as 


IMAGINATION.  295 

a  natural  result.  The  child  becomes  more  matter-of-fact,  and  his 
early  spontaneous  fancies  pass  into  more  regular  forms,  con- 
trolled and  directed  by  an  enlightened  will.  This  is  evinced  in  the 
mental  revels  of  the  child.  The  activity  of  the  imagination  now 
becomes  more  and  more  influenced  by  the  sense  of  what  is  true 
and  actual.  He  can  no  longer  be  satisfied  with  a  sky-blue  hip- 
popotamus, the  old  nursery  tales  or  fairy  stories.  He  likes  to  hear 
stories  that  are  in  actual  touch  with  real  life.  He  prefers  accounts 
of  the  actual  or  probable  doings  of  children  to  all  the  literature 
of  the  Jack-and-the-Bean-stalk  variety.  Still  it  is  unfortunate 
if  this  period  manifests  itself  too  early  in  the  child's  course  of 
development.  He  will  be  all  the  stronger  and  more  powerful  as 
a  thinker,  certainly  more  original,  if  he  spend  his  earliest  years 
in  contemplating  fancy's  pictures. 

How  delightful  to  be  an  unobserved  listener  at  children's 
games!  Oftentimes  have  I  concealed  myself  behind  the  trailing 
vines  that  clamber  up  over  the  piazza,  to  hear  the  conversation 
of  a  covey  of  young  children  on  the  lawn  below.  How  easy  then 
to  see  the  relation  that  obtains  between  the  wilder  and  more 
rambling  ravings  of  the  imagination,  and  the  period  of  the 
child's  development!  The  average  child  of  three  or  four  years 
will  be  quick  to  tell  of  a  pig  with  six  legs,  a  horse  with  three  ears, 
a  mouse  as  big  as  a  dog,  blue  apple-blossoms  and  pink  cats. 
But  the  older  child  will  at  once  correct  these  tales  by  their  own 
standards,  gained  from  real  experience.  Children  will  tell  their 
semi-plausible  stories  as  long  as  the  listener  will  express  astonish- 
ment.  When  his  accounts  no  longer  evoke  wonder,  the  child  is  very 
apt  to  part  company  with  pseudomania.  I  have  observed  children 
play  contentedly  in  their  world  of  make-believe  until  they  discov- 
ered that  I,  an  alien,  was  looking  on,  when  they  would  become 
confused  and  run  to  me  quickly  to  explain  that  they  were  only 
playing,  seeming  half  ashamed  of  the  fact  that  they  were  revel- 
ing, in  their  play,  with  imaginary  entities.  In  this  way,  it  occurs 
to  me  that  of  itself,  the  early  imaginary  impulse  in  its  crude  form 
is  replaced  by  a  desire  to  learn  about  things,  and  by  a  regard  for 
what  is  actually  true  in  the  world  of  external  nature  and  oi  life 


296  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

itself.  The  imagination  gradually  becomes  a  handmaiden  serv- 
ing the  ends  of  knowledge.  The  toys  no  longer  serve  as  "lay 
figures  round  which  the  child  may  weave  and  drape  his  fancies." 
He  prefers  a  more  real  life.  In  this  connection  it  is  interesting 
to  note  the  following  quotation  from  Mr.  NewelFs  "  Games  and 
Songs  of  American  Children." 

"  Observe  a  little  girl  who  has  attended  her  mother  for  an  air- 
ing in  some  city  park.  The  older  person,  quietly  seated  by  the 
footpath,  is  half-absorbed  in  reverie;  takes  little  notice  of  pas- 
sers-by, or  of  neighboring  sights  or  sounds,  further  than  to  cast 
an  occasional  glance,  which  may  inform  her  of  the  child's  security. 
The  other,  left  to  her  own  devices,  wanders  contentedly  within  the 
limited  scope,  incessantly  prattling  to  herself;  now  climbing  an 
adjoining  rock,  now  flitting  like  a  bird  from  one  side  of  the  path- 
way to  the  other.  Listen  to  her  monologue,  flowing  as  inces- 
santly and  musically  as  the  bubbling  of  a  spring;  if  you  can  catch 
enough  to  follow  her  thought,  you  will  find  a  perpetual  romance 
unfolding  itself  in  her  mind.  Imaginary  persons  accompany  her 
footsteps;  the  properties  of  a  childish  theater  exist  in  her  fancy; 
she  sustains  a  conversation  in  three  or  four  characters.  The 
roughness  of  the  ground,  the  hasty  passage  of  a  squirrel,  the 
chirping  of  a  sparrow,  are  occasions  sufficient  to  suggest  an  ex- 
change of  impressions  between  the  unreal  figures  with  which  her 
world  is  peopled.  If  she  ascends,  not  without  a  stumble,  the  ar- 
tificial rockwork,  it  is  with  the  expressed  solicitude  of  a  mother 
who  guides  an  infant  by  the  edge  of  a  precipice ;  if  she  raises  a 
glance  to  the  waving  green  overhead,  it  is  with  the  cry  of  pleasure 
exchanged  by  playmates  who  trip  from  home  on  a  sunshiny  day. 
The  older  person  is  confined  within  the  barriers  of  memory  and 
experience;  the  younger  breathes  the  free  air  of  creative  fancy." 

Again,  every  teacher  knows,  or  ought  to  know,  that  if  we  seek  to 
get  clear  ideas  respecting  the  nature  of  the  objects  of  admiration 
and  love  which  keep  the  lives  of  children  sweet  and  wholesome, 
we  find  that  all  the  kinds  of  love  and  admiration  which  decide 
what  shall  be  the  general  tenor  of  their  life,  the  relation  in  which 
they  ^ill  stand  to  their  fellow  creatures,  what  shall  be  the  occu- 


IMAGINATION.  297 

pation  of  their  leisure  time— I  say  all  these  certainly  fall  into  two 
great  classes :  (1)  Those  interests  which  center  in  the  study  of 
nature  [botany,  geology,  zoology,  and  the  like] ;  and  (2)  the 
class  of  studies  that  inquire  into  feelings,  actions,  and  thoughts 
of  man  himself.  All  the  interests  which  keep  human  life  in  the 
right  channels  belong  to  one  or  the  other,  or  both  of  these  two 
classes.  Have  you  ever  fully  realized  that  no  human  being  canlive 
a  healthy,  normal  life  unless  he  admire  nature  or  the  best  and 
highest  thoughts,  feelings,  and  actions  of  man  ?  The  men  of  fine 
texture,  the  men  of  fine  heart  and  brain  fiber,  the  men  of  true  no- 
bility, are  men  who  have  been  deeply  influenced  by  admiration 
and  love  of  nature.  But  such  admiration  can  never  be  made  pos- 
sible without  the  presence  of  the  idealizing  faculty — the  creative 
imagination. 

You  well  know  that  a  great  poem  or  drama,  a  book  of  travel, 
a  descriptive  narrative,  written  by  a  man  who  loved  nature,  can 
hardly  be  said  to  exist  for  those  who  do  not  themselves  know  na- 
ture, for  they  cannot  orient  themselves  into  the  writer's  thoughts 
and  moods.  The  children  who  are  growing  up  in  our  homes,  and 
more  especially  in  our  crowded  cities,  in  ignorance  of  all  such 
things  as  flowers  and  trees  and  birds,  are  ignorant  also  of  all  kinds 
of  human  achievements  made  beautiful  in  form  or  color;  the 
place  in  the  hearts  of  these  children,  that  ought  to  be  filled  with 
feelings  and  thoughts  supplied  by  beautiful  things  in  nature  and 
by  the  beautiful  products  of  human  art,  is  filled  instead  with  feel- 
ings and  thoughts  evoked  by  a  little  shrunken,  shriveled  world 
of  small,  grimy  houses  with  gloomy  surroundings. 

How  fortunate  it  is  that  the  child  naturally  seeks  for  the  beau- 
tiful !  But  you  must  remember  that  the  beauty  the  child  gains  in 
his  quest,  is  found  to  be  beautiful  because  it  corresponds  to  a  cer- 
tain ideal  (crude  though  it  be)  supplied  by  the  child 'sown  creative 
imagination.  I  know  a  certain  teacher  who  was  most  tactful  in 
discipline  and  most  delightful  as  an  instructor.  Every  one  of  her 
scholars  thought  her  beautiful.  I  remember  one  exuberant  boy 
saying,  "Miss  M.  is  the  most  beautifulest  lady  in  the  world.  She's 
just  handsome."  And  yet  as  a  matter  of  fact  she  was  the  home- 


298  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

liest  person  I  have  ever  seen.  The  beauty  the  boy  perceived  was 
an  ideal  beauty,  but  based  upon  certain  qualities  which  evoked 
the  child's  admiration  and  love. 

I  was  recently  made  acquainted  with  the  following  little  inci- 
dent, by  a  friend :  "  I  asked  a  ragged  little  child  on  the  street," 
said  this  friend,  "  which  she  would  rather  have,  the  red  carnation 
in  my  button-hole  or  a  dime.  She  eagerly  took  the  flower.  Nor 
could  I  induce  her  to  exchange  by  extravagant  stories  of  all  the 
nice  things  she  could  buy  with  the  money.  She  only  clutched  the 
flower  the  tighter."  This  little  scarlet  blossom  corresponded 
to  the  child's  ideal  of  beauty.  This  ideal  was  supplied  by  the 
imaginative  faculty. 

Experience  has  proven  that  a  large  proportion  of  persons  who 
have  attained  the  age  of  thirteen,  ignorant  of  reading,  writing 
and  arithmetic,  and  yet  have,  after  that  age,  learned  as  much 
reading,  writing  and  arithmetic  as  they  needed  to  lead  useful 
lives.  But  alongside  this  is  the  other  fact  that  experience  has 
also  demonstrated,  that  persons  who  reach  the  age  of  thirteen 
without  admiring  and  loving  admirable  and  lovable  things, 
seldom  make  good  that  defect  in  after  life. 

What  objects  of  sympathy  those  vacant-eyed  children  are,  who, 
though  they  look  at  you,  do  not  see  you!  "  Joe,  what  are  you 
thinking  about  ?  "  "  I  ain't  thinking  of  no  thin'."  Right  here  is 
made  plain  the  function  of  the  modern  kindergarten.  In  the 
kindergarten  the  child  plays  again  and  again  with  the  same  little 
box  of  blocks,  eight  in  number  and  alike  as  to  shape.  He  soon 
finds  how  readily  they  respond  to  his  fancy,  and  takes  delight  in 
them  day  after  day.  His  experience  is  the  same  with  respect  to 
the  sheet  of  paper,  the  lump  of  clay  and  the  little  bundle  of  sticks. 
You  can  see  then,  that  a  new  idea  is  graven  upon  his  mind  — 
How  much  can  be  done  with  how  little!  Is  not  this  a  most 
important  idea  for  the  child  to  grasp  and  retain  ? 

What  significance  it  has  for  his  after  life !  How  much  is  gained 
by  the  child  who  has  revealed  to  him,  in  his  kindergarten  life,  the 
superiority  of  a  pleasure  that  comes  from  the  use  of  his  own 
thought  and  power  upon  simple,  crude  material !  Then  it  is  that 


IMAGINATION.  299 

he  lives  the  sentiment  of  Carlyle's  noble  thought— "  Not  what  I 
know,  but  what  I  do,  is  my  kingdom." 

I  have  in  mind  now  a  very  industrious  little  fellow,  but  who 
was  the  most  unimaginative  child  I  have  ever  known.  He  had 
no  sense  of  humor  whatever.  But  when  put  into  the  kindergarten 
it  did  not  take  long  to  develop  in  him  a  most  decided  sense  of 
humor,  and  the  keenest  perception  of  fun.  In  a  short  time  he  was 
transformed  from  the  grim,  sober,  playless  little  child  into  one 
lively,  happy,  and  vivacious. 

Not  long  ago  I  spent  a  few  moments  in  observing  a  band  of 
these  sunshiny  kindergarten  chicks  at  their  morning  games.  My 
little  Gretchen  was  a  member  of  the  group.  Her  nut-brown  hair 
falls  in  graceful  curls  to  her  shoulders.  One  keen  little  fellow,  who 
was  occupied  with  a  cylinder,  noticing  these,  exclaimed,  "Oh, 
Miss  Kate,  Gretchen  has  cylinders  on  her  head ! "  Gretchen  began 
to  feel  all  over  her  head  with  her  hand  to  find  the  wooden  blocks, 
as  she  supposed.  All  this  time  the  little  fellow  who  made  the  re- 
mark was  shaking  his  sides  with  laughter.  After  awhile  the  rest 
of  the  children,  and  Gretchen  herself,  saw  the  joke.  Without  an 
active  imagination  the  relation  between  the  curls  and  the  wooden 
cylinder  would  never  have  been  perceived  by  the  keen,  bright-eyed 
child. 

Although,  through  the  child's  added  sense  experiences  and  the 
development  of  his  powers  of  judgment  and  reasoning,  the  wilder 
ravings  of  his  fancy  become  curbed,  it  is  a  serious  mistake  to 
suppose  that  the  imaginative  power  ceases  to  grow.  It  simply 
"changes  tack  "  and  follows  more  fruitful  and  beneficial  lines  than 
it  did  in  earlier  childhood.  The  power  of  the  youth's  construct- 
ive imagination  goes  on  developing,  at  the  same  time  inducing  a 
gradual  enrichment  and  deepening  of  all  his  mental  faculties. 
Why  can  the  child  of  twelve  follow  the  narrative  of  a  historical 
book,  or  book  of  adventure,  better  than  a  child  of  eight?  Sim- 
ply because  his  higher  development  of  the  constructive  imagi- 
nation enables  him  to  group  the  elements  of  recorded  experience 
with  greater  facility. 

It  is  a  comparatively  modern  notion  that  the  function  of  the 


300  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSTCHOLOGT. 

true  educator  involves  the  guidance  of  the  imagination  of  his 
pupils  as  well  as  their  other  mental  powers.  Formerly  it  was  con- 
ceived that  if 'the  educator  had  anything  at  all  to  do  in  the  guid- 
ance of  this  special  faculty,  that  guidance  or  direction  should 
take  the  nature  of  a  smothering  or  repression  of  its  activity.  It 
is  a  delightful  relief  to  note  that  a  marked  change  in  point  of 
view  has  come  to  pass  with  reference  to  the  way  in  which  the 
child's  creative  fancy  should  be  treated  by  the  teacher.  It  is  re- 
freshing to  observe  that  the  modern,  wide-awake  teacher  is  turn- 
ing his  attention  more  and  more  to  the  problem  of  helping  to  de- 
velop the  imaginative  faculty  in  some  worthy  manner,  such  as 
will  contribute  to  the  mental  health  of  the  child  and  retain  har- 
mony among  all  the  powers  of  mind  — the  harmony  that  charac- 
terizes the  normally  developed  child. 

That  there  should  be  some  educational  discipline  of  the  imag- 
inative faculty  goes  without  saying.  But  this  discipline  should 
by  no  means  be  a  repression  of  the  power  itself.  It  is  a  source  of 
great  regret  that  educators  have  been  apt  to  overestimate  the 
evils  of  indulging  in  flights  of  the  imagination  on  the  part  of 
children.  The  child's  imaginative  creations  are  most  natural  to 
the  mind  at  its  early  stages  of  development,  and  assist  in  inciting 
it  to  new  achievements  and  further  development.  Furthermore, 
it  is  most  important  and  appropriate  that  the  child  create  this 
fairy-like  world,  if  the  best  elements  of  his  mental  make-up  are 
to  be  conserved.  Natural?  What  is  more  natural  than  the 
following  incident  from  the  life  of  a  boy:  "Six-year-old  A,  had 
found  a  dead  hen.  He  got  a  few  old  papers,  some  twigs  and 
a  few  sticks  of  kindling  wood,  and  piled  them  up  in  a  regular 
way;  he  then  cut  off  a  few  pieces  of  twigs  that  stuck  out.  He 
put  the  old  hen  on  top  of  the  pile  and  set  fire  to  it.  His  mother 
came  out  just  as  the  fire  commenced  burning  the  hen,  and  she 
asked  him  what  he  was  doing.  He  replied:  'I  am  offering  a 
sacrifice  for  the  sins  of  all  the  neighbors.' "  *  Observe  almost 
any  normal  child  from  day  to  day,  and  see  the  thousand  and  one 
imitative  acts  which  he  is  impelled  to  perform  by  the  influence  of 

*  From  the  collection  of  observations  at  the  Worcester  Normal  School. 


IMAGINATION.  301 

his  irrepressible  imagination.  Do  this  even  for  a  short  time,  and 
you  will  be  fully  convinced  that  the  child's  creative  fancy  sup- 
plies a  large  portion  of  that  little  world  in  which  he  lives  and 
moves  and  has  his  being.  Furthermore,  the  so-called  harmful  ef- 
fects are  found  to  be  very  temporary  and  evanescent  in  character. 

You  see,  then,  that  while  in  certain  directions  and  on  compara- 
tively rare  occasions  the  educator  has  to  check  and  impose  a 
limit  upon  too  extravagant  an  activity  of  the  productive  imagi- 
nation, his  larger  obligations  to  the  child  make  it  really  incum- 
bent upon  the  teacher  to  aid  in  the  development  of  this  faculty. 
No  better  preparation  for  the  serious  work  of  later  years  than 
the  spontaneous  and  playful  exercise  of  this  creative  fancy  can 
be  conceived.  Do  not  —  as  you  value  the  child's  mental  develop- 
ment—  do  not  be  too  anxious  to  check  the  childish  vagaries 
created  by  his  imagination.  Neither  intellect  nor  character  will 
be  harmed  by  them,  and  to  a  large  extent  they  may  be  left  to 
correct  themselves. 

While  it  seems  to  be  the  rule  that  imaginative  children  are  at 
first  slow  at  their  lessons  in  the  more  matter-of-fact  school  work, 
it  is  also  true  that  the  child  whose  imagination  has  been  well 
directed  by  helpful  stories  and  descriptions,  will,  other  things 
being  equal,  be  the  best  learner  at  school.  What  better  exercise 
than  these  stories  that  appeal  to  the  imagination  of  the  child  can 
be  devised  for  cultivating  the  child's  power  of  concentrated  atten- 
tion, so  essential  to  learning  in  the  school  and  to  all  mental  ad- 
vancement? Besides,  it  is  a  question  —  a  most  serious  question — 
whether  it  is  a  part  of  wisdom  to  have  the  curriculum  of  the 
primary  grades  made  up  of  the  matter-of-fact  studies.  Far  better 
for  the  child,  is  the  revised  one-syllable  edition  of  "  Robinson  Cru- 
soe" than  the  old  barbarous  attempts  to  teach  him  the  abstract 
multiplication  table.  Early,  careful  nurture  of  the  imagination, 
by  means  of  wholesome  and  well-selected  food,  has  a  great  deal 
to  do  in  determining  the  scope  of  intellectual  activity  that  is 
ultimately  attained  by  the  child. 

Of  course,  to  train  the  imagination  wisely  the  educator  must 
pay  close  attention  to  the  natural  laws  of  its  operation.  In  im- 


302  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

posing  tasks  upon  the  child,  that  involve  the  activity  of  the  con- 
structive or  creative  imagination,  be  very  careful  to  make  those 
tasks  simple  and  adapted  to  the  stage  of  the  child's  development, 
You  can  never  be  successful  in  calling  the  child's  imagination  into 
exercise,  unless  he  has  an  ample  stock  of  those  experiences  out  of 
which  the  picture  must  be  constructed.  The  child  cannot  make  one 
single  advance  step  into  the  world  of  the  unknown  unless  he  can 
construct  analogies.  I  remember  once,  when  trying  to  instruct  a 
couple  of  very  young  children  as  to  the  appearance  of  a  mountain, 
I  gave  a  rather  elaborate  description  of  its  elevation  and  general 
appearance,  but  one  of  them  —  a  little  four-year-old — did  not  seem 
to  comprehend.  But  his  sister,  only  a  year  older.,  made  it  per- 
fectly plain  to  him  by  telling  him  "  a  mountain  looks  like  a  great 
big  chocolate  drop  — bigger  than  all  the  houses  and  all  the  trees." 
Her  simple  analogy,  so  crudely  expressed,  did  much  more  to  in- 
still clear  ideas  into  the  mind  of  that  child,  because  it  was  in  touch 
with  his  limited  stock  of  actual  experiences. 

Again,  in  cultivating  the  imagination  you  must  call  it  into 
exercise  gradually.  You  must  suit  the  image  you  bring  before  the 
child's  mind,  not  only  to  his  stock  of  experiences  with  actually 
perceived  objects,  and  with  due  regard  to  the  order  in  which  the 
faculties  unfold  and  develop,  but  your  images  must  be  suited  to 
the  degree  of  imaginative  power  already  attained.  Don't  spring 
a  complicated  story  of  adventure  on  a  child  who  has  never  heard 
the  simpler  traditional  stories  of  babyhood. 

Furthermore,  due  notice  must  be  taken  of  the  main  condition 
of  success  in  all  instruction— the  awakening  of  keen  and  lively 
interest.  If  you  are  seeking  to  call  the  child's  constructive  pow- 
ers into  play,  you  must  provide  materials  that  appeal  to  his  feel- 
ings. Without  appeal  to  the  child's  feelings  of  sympathy,  amuse- 
ment, admiration,  pathos  and  the  like,  no  lively  interest  will 
result  from  your  efforts,  be  they  ever  so  great. 

So  much  "  Children's  Literature  "  is  insipid,  flat,  and  uninter- 
esting because  the  above-mentioned  pedagogical  principles  are 
overlooked.  Those  painfully  didactic, "  namby-pamby,"  "goody- 
goody"  stories  in  little  green  books  with  chromo  covers,  such  as 


IMAGINATION.  303 

used  to  be  presented  to  us  as  a  "  Keward  of  Merit"  by  our  Sun- 
day-school teachers,  never  succeed  in  gaining  the  attention  of  the 
average  child,  because  they  are  not  properly  gauged  to  fit  his  ex- 
periences or  evoke  his  interest.  This  "  sugar-water  "  literature  is 
as  deleterious  in  its  effects  as  are  those  books  in  which  the  writers 
describe  scenes  and  impressions  quite  beyond  the  child's  mental 
reach,  because  they  cannot  look  at  the  world  with  the  eyes  of  a 
child,  but  retain  their  red  and  blue  spectacles  of  prejudice  and  old- 
fogyism.  The  book  of  the  child  must  be  clear  and  free  from  all 
allusions  that  are  above  and  beyond  him,  but  it  must  also  be  not 
too  simple,  leaving  no  room  for  his  creative  power.  To  give  a 
child  a  book  whose  contents  leave  no  place  for  efforts  of  the  im- 
agination is  as  ridiculous  as  to  tell  an  adult  person  —  a  full-grown 
man  —  sitting  fora  picture  at  the  photographer's,  "Now  watch 
closely  and  listen,  and  you  will  see  the  kitty  or  hear  the 
birdie ;  "  on  the  other  hand,  to  give  the  child  too  "  old  "  a  book  is 
as  absurd  as  to  tell  a  three-months  old  baby,  when  trying  to  get 
its  first  picture,"  Now  smile,  look  pleasant  and  don't  gesticulate." 

A  problem  beset  with  many  practical  difficulties,  arises  when 
we  begin  to  discuss  the  exact  nature  of  the  training  we  would 
give  the  child's  imagination.  It  was  shown  earlier  in  the  chapter 
that  there  are  great  individual  differences  among  children  with 
respect  to  imaginative  power.  Not  only  are  they  representatives 
of  the  tactile,  visual,  auditory  or  motor  type,  but  they  differ  wide- 
ly in  their  ability  to  combine  the  raw  material  of  thought. 
These  great  individual  differences  that  we  find  in  children,  with 
respect  to  both  reproductive  and  creative  imagination,  are  of 
utmost  importance  to  education  and  must  be  borne  in  mind  in 
every  discussion  of  pedagogical  method. 

In  view  of  all  these  shades  of  differences  that  characterize  the 
tactile,  motile,  visual  and  auditory  types  respectively,  as  well  as 
the  differences  in  creative  power,  manifested  in  all  degrees,  from 
the  stupid,  prosaic  child  to  the  most  confirmed  idealist — in  view 
of  these  differences,  many  questions  of  vital  interest  arise  within 
the  mind  of  the  educator.  Is  one  type  of  mind  better  than  all  the 
others  ?  If  so,  should  the  teacher  tear  down  in  order  that  he  may 


304  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

reconstruct  the  child  ?  Should  the  teacher  conform  his  methods 
to  the  child's  type  of  mind,  using  pictures,  reading  charts,  dia- 
grams and  the  like,  for  the  good  visualizer ;  kindergarten  occupa- 
tions, sloyd,  reading  aloud,  and  other  oral  exercises  for  the  mo- 
tor type?  Or  should  the  teacher,  on  the  other  hand,  check  any 
tendency  to  specialize  in  any  one  class  of  mental  images  ?  Should 
the  child  be  permitted  to  deal  in  only  one  "line  of  goods?" 
Should  the  teacher  aim  to  supply  deficiencies,  i.  e.,  should  he  seek 
to  transform  the  poor  visualizer  into  a  good  visualizer?  Should 
he  seek  to  develop  the  child  equally  well  along  all  lines  traversed 
by  the  imagination  in  its  activity? 

To  illustrate  what  I  mean :  Should  the  teacher,  in  teaching  the 
alphabet  (if  the  alphabet  should  be  taught  at  all),  first  accus- 
tom the  child's  ear  to  the  sounds,  then  appeal  to  the  motor 
images  and  teach  him  pronunciation,  and  finally  the  forms  of 
letters,  as  some  prominent  writers  maintain?  Or  should  all 
three  of  the  operations  be  carried  on  at  once,  each  re-inforcing 
the  other,  which  is,  I  believe  the  prevailing  custom  ?  These  are 
questions  which  cannot  be  answered  without  appeal  to  experi- 
ment. A  system  of  tests  ought  to  be  devised  and  accurate  rec- 
ords preserved.  Such  experimental  tests  have  not  as  yet  been 
made.  For  a  time,  then,  we  must  hold  our  questions  in  solution 
until  experimental  pedagogy  determines  the  best  path  to  follow. 
Of  course  here  and  there  we  can  make  special  observations  and 
special  applications  in  individual  cases.  But  as  yet  there  is 
insufficient  data  to  guide  us  to  well  authenticated  general  con- 
clusions. 

In  whatever  way  these  questions  are  answered  by  future  appeal 
to  experiment,  certain  it  is  that  the  different  degrees  of  devel- 
opment attained  by  the  imagination,  as  well  as  the  different  ten- 
dencies of  this  development  in  different  children,  must  account  in 
a  measure, for  the  oft  observed  fact  that  a  group  of  children,  sur- 
rounded by  the  same  educational  influences,  make  such  different 
progress.  If  the  teacher  lay  especial  stress  upon  the  eye-method, 
he  will  most  certainly  handicap  those  of  the  class  who  think 
chiefly  in  auditory  images,  and  vice  versa,.  Again,  manual  train- 


IMAGINATION.  305 

ing,  drawing,  writing,  clay  modeling,  all  appeal  to  the  child's 
stock  of  motor  images.  Instruction  in  gymnastics  and  athletics 
is  one  of  the  best  methods  of  training  the  child  in  this  line,  as 
musical  instruction  is  the  best  method  of  training  his  power  of 
imaging  in  terms  of  audition. 

While  we  cannot  treat  of  each  of  the  methods  in  detail,  we  are 
inclined  to  the  view  that  in  education  we  should  use  every  ave- 
nue to  the  mind,  that  is  open  —  every  sense  should  be  appealed 
to;  eye,  ear,  hand,  muscles,  etc.,  should  all  be  made  use  of  in 
securing  normal  development,  for  all  the  strings  of  the  soul's 
harp  must  be  in  tune  if  there  be  harmony  and  not  discord  when 
the  demands  for  activity  are  made  upon  it  by  the  emergencies  of 
practical  life. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  feared  that  each  teacher  will  adopt  that  type 
of  instruction  which  proceeds  in  terms  of  his  own  method  of  think- 
ing. If  he  be  agoodvisualizer,  he  will  instruct  his  class  in  terms  of 
visual  images ;  if  he  belong  to  the  auditory  type,  he  will  color  all 
his  methods  with  the  auditory  hue,  and  likewise  as  to  the  motor 
and  tactile  types  of  instructors.  Teachers  are  apt  to  think  that 
their  pupils  have  the  same  way  of  regarding  things  as  they  them- 
selves. So  our  professional  teacher,  who  finds  one  method  suited 
to  his  type  of  mind,  will  adhere  to  it  as  the  only  method  and  be 
blind  to  the  good  features  of  all  other  methods.  No  method  has 
ever  been  devised  that  will  admit  of  universal  application.  In 
closing  this  chapter,  we  must  reiterate,  that  in  the  work  of  instruct- 
ing a  child,  the  teacher  must  always  exercise  his  own  powers  of 
imagination,  and  must  also  appeal  continually  to  the  germs  of 
imaginative  effort  which  are  present  in  every  normal  child. 

L.  P.—20 


LESSON  XXII. 

REASONING. 

WHENEVER  themind  gasseg  frojncme  factjo  another  mjthought, 
considering  the  firstasasort  of  sign  or  indication^of^thesecond, 
rejsonj3rjnfe£  To  inter  is  to  find  out  what  will  be 
sis  of  something  else  being  true.  Thus  I  infer  when 
I  say :  "  If  this  gunpowder  is  damp,  it  will  not  explode."  Or,  if  on 
looking  out  of  the  window  we  see  the  sky  overcast  with  threaten- 
ing clouds,  and  as  a  result  of  this  observation  predict  rain,  we 
are  said  to  be  engaged  in  a  process  of  reasoning.  You  tell  the 
child  that  if  he  touch  the  cake  of  ice  with  his  hand,  his  hand  will 
feel  cold.  The  conviction  that  you  have,  and  which  you  express 
to  the  child,  is  based  upon  an  observation  of  certain  of  your  own 
experiences,  which  observation  has  led  you  to  regard  "coldness" 
as  an  essential  mark  or  attribute  of  ice. 

The  real  basis  of  inference  is  found  to  be  a  discovery  of  similar- 
ity among  facts  or  experiences.  You  awaken  in  the  morning  and 
glance  at  the  clock  on  the  mantel-piece  to  learn  the  time  of  day. 
You  know  that  this  particular  object  is  a  clock  because  it  corre- 
sponds to  the  remembered  image  of  clocks  you  have  already  seen, 
including  this  one.  It  looks  thus  and  so.  It  has  a  dial,  hands, 
certain  characters  or  figures  on  its  face,  and  ticks,  just  like  other 
clocks.  Because  it  looks  thus  and  so,  you  feel  justified  in  saying 
that  it  is  a  clock,  and  you  do  so  by  a  process  of  reasoning.  Sup- 
pose the  clock  is  not  ticking,  you  reason  at  once  that  this  par- 
ticular clock  has  stopped,  for  all  going  clocks  that  you  have 
observed  heretofore  do  tick.  You  sleepily  turn  your  eyes  toward 
the  window  and  you  see  it  is  quite  light  out  of  doors.  Just  then 
you  hear  a  shop-whistle  blow.  You  infer  that  it  is  time  to  get 
up  because  it  is  light,  and  you  infer  further  that  it  is  seven  o'clock 
because  the  particular  whistle  you  heard  always  u blows"  at 
seven  o'clock.  Then  you  begin  to  dress.  Every  act  in  this  prp- 
(306) 


REASONING.  307 

cedure  is  based  upon  reasoning  of  some  sort  or  other,  though 
the  reasoning  process  itself  may  be  abbreviated.  You  do 
not  begin  your  operations  by  first  putting  on  your  hat,  shoes 
and  necktie,  for  that  would  be  an  unreasonable  method  of  pro- 
cedure. You  seat  yourself  at  the  breakfast  table  because  you 
know  from  previous  experience  that  in  order  to  get  your  break- 
fast you  must  be  searbed  at  the  table.  You  eat  certain  foods, 
knowing  they  agree  with  you.  You  say,"  Good  morning,  Mary," 
because  by  an  act  of  reasoning  you  know  that  "Mary"  looks 
thus  and  so,  and  this  person  looks  and  acts  the  same  way,  you 
conclude  that  this  person  before  you  and  Mary  are  one  and  the 
same  person.  In  all  these  mental  processes  you  are  basing  your 
conclusions  upon  the  detection  of  similarity  among  facts  and 
experiences,  just  as  you  do  when  you  predict  a  shower  on  observ- 
ing the  clouded  sky,  you  identify  the  present  appearance  of  the 
sky  with  previously  observed  appearances  which  were  actually 
followed  by  rain.  In  inference^  therefore,  we  identify  things  or 
events  in  their  relation  to  other  things  or  events.  You  can  see 
also  that  this  is  indispensable  to  mental  progress,  for  by  means 
of  this  capacity  of  inference  we  can  proceed  from  facts  actually 
seen  and  observed  at  the  moment  —  the  known  fact — to  other 
facts  that  we  do  not  have  before  us  at  the'  time — the  unknown. 

Do  you  realize  that  all  of  us  are  reasoning  every  movement  of 
our  wakeful  consciousness  ?  Of  course  one  is  not  always  con- 
scious of  going  through  a  process  of  reasoning.  You  say  you 
see  the  clock,  you  hear  the  whistle,  you  know  it  is  seven  o'clock, 
and  so  on,  when  you  really  infer  in  each  case.  When  I  say,  "  Wet 
gunpowder  will  not  explode, "  I  am  expressing  in  an  abbreviated 
form  an  actual  process  of  reasoning.  I  look  out  of  my  study 
window  just  now  and  I  say,  "  The  ground  is  wet."  But  I  cannot 
see  the  ground  at  all  from  where  I  am  sitting,  yet  I  know  the 
ground  is  wet,  for  I  see  it  raining.  So  when  I  say  the  ground  is 
wet,  I  have  actually  reasoned  in  such  form  as  this : 

When  it  is  raining*  the  ground  is  wet. 

It  is  raining. 

Therefore,  the  ground  is  wet. 


308  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

When  one  is  not  conscious  of  the  actual  reasoning  process,  we 
say  in  such  cases,  his  reasoning  is  implicit.  In  this  lower  and 
abbreviated  form  of  reasoning,  one  passes  in  thought  from  one 
fact  to  another  fact  without  explicitly  setting  forth  the  ground 
or  reason  of  the  conclusion.  Thus  the  child  will  infer  that  water 
will  wet,  without  making  clear  to  his  mind  the  general  principle 
that  all  water  wets.  When  he  breaks  his  toy  and  says,  "  I  can't 
mend  it,  but  papa  can,"  he  does  so  without  being  conscious  of  the 
general  truth  that  lies  at  the  basis  of  his  statement,  namely,  that 
his  father  is  more  skillful  in  repairing  broken  toys  than  he  is 
himself.  We  call  this  implicit  reasoning,  because  in  this  method 
of  inferring  from  particulars  to  particulars,  certain  general  prin- 
ciples or  conclusions  are  implied,  but  not  expressed. 

This  is,  of  course,  only  the  lower  type  of  reasoning.  It  is  a 
very  primitive  and  instinctive  mode  of  inference.  The  lower  ani- 
mals infer  as  to  the  proximity  of  prey  or  the  approach  of  enemies 
in  this  implicit  way.  Children  likewise  draw  conclusions  in  the 
same  informal  manner.  Certain  it  is  that  the  first  reasonings  of 
a  child  are  of  this  character.  The  child  sees  a  round,  smooth, 
red  object  and  says:  "I  want  the  apple,"  thinking  that  this 
round,  smooth,  red  object  possesses  certain  potential  tastes  as 
have  other  round,  smooth,  red  objects  which  he  has  .been  taught 
to  call  apples.  All  such  recognition  is  the  product  of  reasoning. 
You  observe  a  man  passing  by  your  dooryard.  You  say :  "That 
is  the.same  man  I  saw  at  church  last  Sunday."  When  asked  why 
you  think  so,  you  reply:  "  I  know  it  is  the  same  man  because  he 
has  such  and  such  a  shaped  face,  a  peculiarly  trimmed  beard  and 
wears  a  suit  of  clothes  of  a  certain  particular  shade  of  gray," 
and  so  on,  enumerating  various  characteristics  that  distinguish 
him  from  other  men.  That  is,  in  enumerating  your  reasons  for 
believing  the  man  who  is  now  passing  to  be  the  same  man  as  the 
one  you  saw  at  church,  you  state  explicitly  what  was  previously 
implicit  in  your  thought  concerning  the  matter.  The  child 
is  peering  out  the  window  and  observes  a  man  opposite  the 
house  and,  after  a  mere  glance,  screams  with  delight:  "Oh, 
papa!"  The  little  toddler  is  engaged  in  implicit  reasoning, 


REASONING.  309 

which  if  expressed  explicitly  would  probably  be  after  some  such 
form  as  this : 

The  man  I  see  coming  looks  thus  and  so. 
My  papa  looks  precisely  the  same. 
Therefore,  the  man  I  see  coming  is  my  papa. 

You  can  quite  readily  see  the  importance  of  distinguishing  this 
crude,  implicit  reasoning  from  what  is  called  in  logic  formal,  or 
explicit,  reasoning.  In  the  latter  process,  if  we  reason  according 
to  rule,  the  mind  seizes  hold  of  a  general  truth  which  is  made  the 
ground  of  certain  conclusions  with  reference  to  the  particular 
facts  under  observation  at  the  time. 

There  are  certain  advantages  that  accrue  from  following  the 
formal  mode  of  procedure.  You  can  readily  see  that  so  long  as 
the  child  passes  instinctively  from  one  fact  to  another,  and  pro- 
ceeds on  the  ground  of  similarity  alone,  his  conclusions  are  apt 
to  be  more  or  less  uncertain  and  dubious.  Thus  the  little  boy  of 
three  and  one-half  years,  who  was  always  anxious  to  explain 
everything,  and  who,  when  asked  what  made  his  hair  curl  so  tight, 
replied,  "  Why,  it's  because  leat  so  fast, "fell  into  error  because  he 
had  no  acquaintance  with  certain  general  principles  that  would 
have  guided  him  aright  in  his  search  for  a  cause.  If  one  should 
infer  that  all  apples  are  good  for  food  because  one  apple  is  good 
to  eat,  he  may  be  mistaken.  Another  exa.mple  of  such  false  rea- 
soning is  the  case  of  the  little  child,  less  than  four  years  of  age, 
who  was  seated  at  the  window  watching  the  falling  raindrops  in 
the, passing  summer  shower.  Suddenly  she  spoke  up:  " I  would 
like  to  stand  out  in  the  rain,  mamma,  because  the  rain  makes  you 
grow  bigger."  I  find  in  my  diary  an  account  of  a  similar  inci- 
dent in  the  life  of  my  little  girl.  It  occurred  when  she  was  four 
years  and  two  months,  old.  She  had  been  denied  the  privilege  of 
going  barefoot,  the  weather  being  too  cold.  At  night,  when  be- 
ing put  to  bed,  she  asked  her  mamma,  "Does  God  wear  shoesand 
stockings  ?"  and  when  told  that  it  was  pretty  hard  to  find  out 
whether  he  does  or  not,  she  spoke  up,  "  Well,  if  he  don't,  he  must 
have  a  mighty  nice  time."  Likewise  as  to  the  case  of  the  child 


310  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

who  thought  thunder  was  caused  by  God  "  driving  his  chariot 
over  bridges."  Or  another,  who  thought  when  it  thundered  that 
God  was  "having  his  coal  run  in."  You  cannot  pass  from  one 
fact  to  another  on  the  ground  of  similarity  or  analogy,  with  any 
degree  of  assurance  that  your  procedure  is  correct  and  authentic, 
or  that  the  results  are  valid . 

.  We  now  come  to  speak  of  the  two  modes  of  reasoning,  the  de- 
ductive and  the  inductive.  As  already  stated,  reasoning  involves 
a  procedure  from  the  known  to  the  unknown.  We  reason  from 
known  particular  facts,  to  unknown  particular  facts.  Now,  when 
we  appeal  to  a  universal  proposition  to  prove  our  conclusions,  the 
reasoning  is  called  deductive;  ft  is  inductive  reasoning  when  we 
reach  a  general  truth  or  principle  by  observation,  examination, 
and  comparison  of  facts.  In  induction  we  proceed  from  fact 
to  fact,  until  we  substantiate  some  general  law.  In  deduction 
we  apply  the  general  truth  thus  attained  (and  usually  reached  by 
the  inductive  process)  to  some  particular  case.  The  child  knows 
that  his  "  kitty. died."  He  observes  that  birds  die,  chickens  die, 
mosquitoes  die,  and  so  after  awhile  he  finds  a  certain  fact  to  be  a 
common  characteristic  of  all  animals;  then  he  announces  the 
higher  general  truth  that  he  has  reached  in  the  words,  "all  ani- 
mals die."  This  is  a  process  of  induction.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  have  abundant  examples  of  deductive  reason  in  the  appli- 
cations that  children  make  of  certain  of  the  more  general  pro- 
verbial sayings  — those  that  have  become  common  property.  The 
following  is  a  case  in  point : 

"Georgie,  what  made  you  go  over  and  play  with  the  Smith 
children  when  you  have  mumps  and  they  have  not  had  them  ?  " 

"  Well,  didn't  the  Sunday-school  teacher  say  it's  more  blessed 
to  give  than  to  receive?  " 

Or  the  interesting  recorded  observation  of  a  child  of  four,  for 
which  we  are  again  indebted  to  Mr.  H.  W.  Brown : 

"  R.'s  aunt  said :  '  You  are  so  restless,  R.,  that  I  cannot  hold  you 
any  longer.'  R.  replied  'Well,  cast  your  burden  on  the  Lord, 
Auntie,  and  he  will  sustain  you.' " 

If  the  child's  mind  be  impressed  with  the  truth  that"  all  animals 


REASONING.  311 

die,"  and  he  knows  his  pet  dog  is  an  animal,  he  concludes  that 
his  dog  must  die.  In  so  concluding  he  reasons  by  a  deductive 
process. 

In  inductive  reasoning  we  are  simply  carrying  on  the  processes 
that  lie  at  the  root  of  all  thinking,  namely,  the  detection  of  simi- 
larity and  diversity.  In  a  previous  chapter  you  were  told  that 
the  cultivation  of  any  avenue  of  sense  depends  upon  the  discrim- 
inative ability  of  that  sense;  it  can  also  be  said  that  in  the  same 
way  the  expansion  of  the  powers  of  judgment,  comparison,  rea- 
soning, depends  upon  the  discriminative  ability  of  the  mind  in 
discerning  the  relations  in  which  things  are  similar  and  dissim- 
ilar to  each  other.  We  are  ever  occupied  in  tracing  out  similarities 
in  a  diversity  of  things  or  seeking  out  differences  among  things 
that  are  apparently  similar. 

You  have  already  observed  that  children  draw  conclusions 
mainly  from  particular  facts,  just  as  some  of  the  higher  animals 
do.  Thus  the  boy  who  planted  a  three-cent-piece  in  the  ground, 
in  the  hope  that  he  would  soon  be  rich,  "for  the  money  will  grow, 
Mamma,"  implicitly  argued  that  all  things  tend  to  grow  when 
planted.  The  inductions  of  children  and  the  uneducated  are  fre- 
quently of  this  type:  "Last  night  as  I  was  going  home  from 
school,  a  man  passed  me  with  a  load  of  wood  drawn  by  a  small 
donkey.  There  were  three  or  four  little  boys  playing  across  the 
road.  One  of  them  said :  'That's  a  dunkee.'  'No,  it's  a  horse,' 
said  another.  'No,  sir!  it's  a  dunkee  because  its  ears  go  this 
way,'  at  the  same  time  taking  hold  of  his  own  ears  and  wriggling 
them  back  and  forth."  *  The  conclusion  of  this  boy  was  cer- 
tainly based  on  a  narrow  and  precarious  foundation.  But  it  is 
no  worse  than  the  reasoning  employed  by  the  woman  who  said 
she  was  glad  her  husband  (a  laborer)  worked  nights  because  "by 
working  nights  he  saves  his  lodging;  and  sleeping  in  the  day 
time  he  saves  his  board."  And  even  this  specimen  is  more  cred- 
itable than  the  argument  employed  by  her  more  wealthy  sister 
of  the  "upper  crust,"  when  she  insisted  that  she  really  had  some 
money  on  deposit  at  the  bank  because  there  were  still  some  blank 

*  Reported  by  H.  W.  Brown  of  Worcester  Normal  School. 


312  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

leaves  in  her  check  book.  Such  pseudo-reasoning  must  be  cor- 
rected by  the  education  that  comes  with  a  wider  experience.  The 
natural  impulse  to  build  up  general  conclusions,  so  inherent  in 
the  child's  make-up,  must  be  regulated  to  avoid  landing  in  error. 
Thus  the  child,  who  argues  that  only  white  cows  give  white  milk, 
and  only  cold  cows  give  cold  milk,  soon  learns  that  his  conclu- 
sions are  hasty  and  inaccurate.  He  learns  to  become  more 
cautious.  The  impulse  to  include  particular  facts  under  general 
truths  begins  to  feel  the  exercise  of  a  guidance  and  control  so 
much  needed.  He  becomes,  from  this  time  on,  more  methodical 
in  his  thinking. 

Without  any  question,  the  most  important  of  all  the  truths 
reached  by  this  inductive  mode  of  reasoning  is  that  concerned  in 
the  search  for  causes  of  events,  phenomena  and  things.  In  order  to 
bring  about  any  result  in  practical  life  or  in  scientific  investiga- 
tion we  must  know  all  the  regulating  conditions  and  determining 
causes.  The  chief  aim  in  all  human  investigations,  especially  in 
the  realm  of  scientific  study,  has  ever  been  to  discover  the  causes 
of  related  phenomena.  This  is  the  stimulus  of  all  research  in  to  the 
puzzling  and  intricate  questions  that  pertain  to  the  physical,  men- 
tal, social  and  ethical  worlds  in  which  man  is  implicated.  In  the 
oldest  records  of  human  speculation,  we  find  that  the  fathers  of 
philosophy  — the  early  Greeks  — were  assiduously  engaged  in  this 
search  for  causes.  The  great  problem  before  the  most  ancient  of 
these  philosophers  was  to  find  the  cause  of  the  world.  Thus 
Thales  found  water  to  be  the  cause  of  all  that  exists.  Water, 
which  makes  the  grass  grow,  which  is  necessary  to  life,  which  is 
the  chief  ingredient  of  the  blood,  was  to  Thales  the  basis  of  all 
existence.  You  see  that  in  the  childhood  of  the  race  as  well 
as  in  this  enlightened  epoch,  men  were  actuated  by  the  desire  to 
find  some  great  principle  that  would  explain  the  world  as  then 
known. 

As  this  was  the  case  in  the  childhood  of  the  race,  so  it  is 
true  of  the  childhood  of  every  individual,  namely,  the  endeavor 
to  find  a  cause  or  reason  for  any  occurrence  that  may  have 
been  observed  by  the  little  eyes,  ears,  hands,  etc.  In  his 


REASONING.  313 

daily  experiences,  through  the  avenues  of  sensation,  the  child 
is  constantly  being  made  aware  of  the  outside  world,  and 
the  various  phenomena  which  take  place  within  its  domain. 
Events  and  occurrences  are  constantly  being  presented  to  him. 
Day  by  day  these  events  are  revealed  to  him  in  relation  to 
causes.  It  does  not  take  the  child  long  to  learn  that  water 
quenches  thirst,  that  fire  burns,  that  food  satisfies  hunger,  and 
that  a  bruise  pains.  Neither  is  the  average  wide-awake  child 
long  in  discovering  that  he  has  power  to  act,  and  by  acting  can 
produce  certain  results.  The  little  fellow  is  quick  to  perceive 
that  shaking  a  rattle-box  produces  a  noise,  that  a  piece  of  twine 
will  break,  that  with  his  shovel  he  can  dig  in  the  sand,  that  with 
plastic  clay  he  can  mould  innumerable  shapes,  that  by  pressing 
the  button  he  can  ring  the  electric  bell,  etc.  A  little  later  in  the 
course  of  his  development,  prepared  and  at  the  same  time 
prompted  by  previous  experiences,  he  begins  to  perceive  that 
things  in  nature  about  him  are  causally  related  to  one  another, 
after  the  same  manner  that  effects  he  produces  are  related  to 
himself. 

For  example,  he  thus  learns  that  the  warm  sunshine  will  melt 
the  ice;  that  overhanging  black  clouds  will  produce  rain;  that 
rain  will  make  the  ground  wet ;  that  intense  cold  will  freeze  water 
into  ice ;  that  frost  ripens  the  nuts  and  makes  them  fall  from  the 
trees  — and  so  on  indefinitely.  Now  it  would  be  impossible  for  the 
child  to  have  a  fund  of  such  experiences  without  having  it  some- 
how suggested  to  his  mind  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  "  cause." 
He  climbs  step  by  step  in  his  scale  of  observation,  examines  the 
experiences  of  all  his  senses,  and  finally  comes  to  the  conclusion 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  uncaused  event.  This  he  soon 
adopts  as  a  universal  principle  governing  all  future  investigation 
and  inquiry. 

Along  with  these  developing  experiences,  by  means  of  which  the 
germ-idea  of  causation  (innate  in  every  individual)  is  unfolded 
until  it  has  a  precise  meaning  and  definite  content,  accompanying 
this  process  there  is  that  natural  inherent  impulse  which  leads 
him  to  inquire  into  the  causes  of  things.  It  seems  that  nearly 


314  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

every  normal  child  is  a  sort  of  animated  interrogation  point. 
What  question  is  more  frequently  asked  by  the  child  than  "Why?" 
And  did  you  ever  see  a  child  who  would  not  make  his  own  infer- 
ences as  to  the  causes  of  things,  if  his  question  "  Why  "  remained 
unanswered  ? 

These  natural  inductions  begin  at  an  exceedingly  early  age 
and  the  very  spontaneity  of  this  impulse  accounts  for  the  many 
hasty  conclusions  which  may  prove  erroneous.  The  slightest 
analogy  between  things  will  frequently  lead  the  child  to  conclude 
that  they  have  the  same  cause,  when  they  are  really  entirely  dis- 
parate phenomena  so  far  as  causal  relations  go.  The  early  rea- 
sonings of  children  are  peculiarly  interesting  and  amusing, 
especially  in  their  quest  for  causes.  Mr.  Brown's  report  of  re- 
corded cases,  compiled  at  the  Worcester  Normal  School,  com- 
prises examples  of  all  shades  of  this  kind  of  reasoning.  Here  is 
a  contribution  made  from  an  observation  of  a  five-year-old  child : 
"Jennie  said:  'What  makes  people  sleepy?'  Hilda  replied: 
1  These  little  hairs  on  your  eyelids.  Every  time  they  come  against 
your  eye  they  make  you  sleepy."3  Another  good  example  is 
that  of  the  seven-year-old  boy  who,  when  asked  why  he  liked 
apple  pie,  replied:  "I  guess  it's  because  I  like  the  bottom  crust, 
and  the  upper  crust,  and  the  apples."  What  could  be  more 
realistic  than  the  following  conversation  of  two  boys?  The 
lawn  had  been  sown  to  grass,  and  the  little  green  shoots  were 
just  visible. 

First  boy :  "  See  how  the  grass  grows." 

Second  boy :  "  What  makes  it  grow  ?  " 

First  boy :  "  God  does." 

Second  boy :  "  No,  he  don't.  It's  the  manure  they  put  on  the 
ground." 

I  remember  of  once  observing  a  little  three-year-old  who  was  a 
member  of  a  pleasure  party  rowing  on  the  river.  One  of  the  oar- 
locks gave  forth  an  unpleasant  squeak,  and  little  Ted  was  told  to 
pour  some  water  on  the  rusty  oar-lock,  which  he  did,  putting  a 
stop  to  the  unpleasant  noise.  The  next  day  he  saw  some  guinea 
hens  in  his  uncle's  barnyard,  and  noticing  the  peculiar  noise  they 


REASONING.  315 

made,  he  rushed  into  the  house  for  his  tin  cup,  because  he  wanted 
to  give  the  guineas  some  water  "to  make  their  necks  stop 
squeaking." 

No  better  instances  of  the  natural  impulse  to  search  for  a 
reason  for  things  are  to  be  found  than  those  examples  that  grow 
out  of  thoughts  about  God  and  his  relation  to  the  world.  Thus 
six-year-old  M.  thought  rain  was  caused  by  God  pulling  a  string, 
just  as  she  did  for  a  shower-bath. 

"  God  is  a  big,  perhaps  blue  man,  very  often  seen  in  the  sky, 
or  in  the  clouds,  in  the  church,  or  even  street.  He  came  in  our 
gate,  comes  to  see  us  sometimes.  He  lives  in  a  big  palace  or  in  a 
big  brick  or  stone  house  on  the  sky.  He  makes  lamps,  babies, 
dogs,  trees,  money,  etc.,  and  the  angels  work  for  him.  He  lights 
the  stars  so  he  can  see  to  go  on  the  sidewalk  or  into  the  church. 
Birds,  children,  Santa  Glaus,  live  with  him,  and  most, but  not  all, 
like  him  better  than  they  do  the  latter.  When  people  die  they 
just  go,  or  are  put  in  a  hole,  or  a  box  or  a  black  wagon  that  goes 
to  heaven,  or  they  fly  up  or  are  drawn  or  slung  up  into  the  sky, 
where  God  catches  them.  They  never  get  out  of  the  hole,  and  yet 
all  good  people  somehow  get  where  God  is.  He  lifts  them  up, 
they  go  up  on  a  ladder  or  rope,  or  they  carry  them  up,  but  keep 
their  eyes  shut  so  they  do  not  know  the  way,  or  they  are  shoved 
up  through  a  hole.  When  children  get  there  they  have  candy, 
rocking-horses,  and  everything  in  the  toy-shop  or  picture-book; 
play  marbles,  top,  ball,  cards,  hookey,  hear  brass  bands,  have 
nice  clothes,  gold  watches,  and  pets,  ice  cream  and  soda  water, 
and  no  school.  There  are  men  who  died  in  the  war  made  into 
angels,  and  dolls  with  broken  heads  go  there.  .  .  .  The  bad 
place  is  like  an  oven  or  a  police-station  where  it  burns,  yet  is  all 
dark,  and  folks  want  to  get  back,  and  God  kills  people  or  beats 
them  with  a  cane.  God  makes  babies  in  heaven,  though  the 
holy  mother,  and  even  Santa  Glaus,  makes  some.  He  lets  them 
down  or  drops  them,  and  the  women  or  doctors  catch  them, 
or  he  leaves  them  on  the  sidewalk,  or  brings  them  down  a  wooden 
ladder  backwards  and  pulls  it  up  again,  or  mamma  or  the  doctor 
or  the  nurse  go  up  and  fetch  them  sometimes  in  a  balloon,  or 


316  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

they  fly  down  and  lose  off  their  wings  in  some  place  or  other  and 
forget  it,  or  jump  down  to  Jesus,  who  gives  them  around."* 

That  thes'e  analogies,  which  lie  at  the  basis  of  much  of  our 
reasoning,  are  detected  quite  early,  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of 
the  child  one  year  and  eight  months  old,  a  little  girl,  who  had  a 
doll  whose  hair  had  all  come  off.  After  visiting  her  grandpa 
(who  happened  to  be  bald-headed),  she  named  her  doll 
"Grandpa." 

We  all  know  that  careful  research  with  a  view  to  the  discovery 
of  causes  is  apt  to  be  a  very  tedious  process.  It  always  implies 
a  painstaking,  systematic  method  of  procedure,  as  is  evidenced 
by  all  forms  of  worthy  scientific  investigation. 

There  are,  generally  speaking,  two  ways  in  which  we,  as  well 
as  men  of  science,  gain  knowledge  of  the  world  about  us.  The 
first  way,  as  Jevons  so  aptly  puts  it,  is  merely  to  observe  what 
happens  without  any  interference  on  our  part.  We  notice  the  rise 
and  fall  of  the  tide  as  we  stroll  along  the  beach.  If  we  become 
sufficiently  interested,  we  can  set  down  on  paper  the  times  at 
which  the  tide  is  highest  on  several  days  in  succession ;  we  shall 
learn  that  high  tide  occurs  about  three-quarters  of  an  hour  later 
on  each  day  than  on  the  previous  day.  If  we  notice  the  heights 
of  the  tides  still  more  closely,  we  observe  that  they  are  greatest 
at  the  time  of  the  new  and  full  moon.  In  such  phenomena  as 
these  we  cannot  in  any  way  interfere,  govern  or  regulate  the 
things  we  observe. 

The  changes  of  the  weather,  the  occurrence  of  storms,  earth- 
quakes, meteoric  showers,  volcanoes,  the  rotation  of  the  earth, 
the  revolution  of  the  planets,  and  the  like,  are  all  things  that  are 
beyond  our  interference  and  control.  In  our  investigations  into 
such  things,  we  are  able  to  employ  only  simple  observation. 

But  there  is  possible  a  condition  of  things  in  which  we  can,  in 
a  measure,  manage  the  circumstances;  that  is,  we  can  make  ex- 
periments. This  means  that,  whenever  possible,  we  should  put 


*  Selected  from  G.  Stanley  Hall's  paraphrase  of  children's  actual  sayings,  ex- 
pressive of  some  of  their  crude  reasonings.  See  "  The  Pedagogical  Seminary," 
June,  1891. 


REASONING.  317 

together  things,  of  which  we  wish  to  learn  the  nature  and  their 
manner  of  behavior  under  different  circumstances,  in  such  a  way 
as  to  exhibit  what  the  action  will  be  under  certain  known  cir- 
cumstances. In  experiment  we  interfere  with  things  by  interpos- 
ing new  conditions ;  we  then  observe  the  results.  Experiment- 
ation is  observation  plus  something  else,  namely,  the  regulation 
and  control  of  things  whose  nature  and  behavior  we  are  seeking 
to  observe. 

Experiment  possesses,  as  you  can  readily  see,  considerable 
advantage  over  mere  observation,  especially  in  scientific  research. 
The  knowledge  we  gain  by  experiment  is  more  accurate  because 
we  know  more  clearly  and  definitely  the  exact  cause  of  the  phe- 
nomena with  which  we  are  dealing,  than  we  do  in  the  simple  ob- 
servation of  natural  events.  The  causes  of  the  events  in  the  experi- 
ments we  conduct,  are  determined  by  our  own  will  in  regard  to 
the  matter  and  we  can  know  them  more  certainly ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  the  mere  observation  of  occurrences  taking  place 
in  nature  and  beyond  our  control,  we  cannot  be  at  all  certain  that 
such  and  such  an  effect  is  produced  by  such  and  such  a  cause. 

Furthermore,  in  experimentation,  when  we  control  the  course 
of  events,  we  are  enabled  to  discover  entirely  new  substances  and 
to  learn  their  properties.  We  vary  the  conditions  and  find  that 
certain  modifications  are  brought  about  by  such  variation.  You 
can  illustrate  the  point  for  yourself  by  carrying  on  some  of  the 
simplest  of  the  ordinary  experiments  in  physics  or  chemistry, 
put  down  in  our  text  books. 

There  are  at  least  four  different  steps  or  stadia  in  all  inductive 
reasoning.  These  are : 

First  step.—  Preliminary  observation. 

Second  step.— -The  making  of  hypotheses. 

Third  step.—  Deductive  reasoning. 

Fourth  step.— Verification. 

The  knowledge  gained  by  the  first  step  is  such  as  comes 
through  the  senses  in  simple  observation.  In  taking  the  second 
step,  we  proceed  to  reason  about  these  facts  and  make  a  scien- 
tific guess  [hypothesis]  concerning  their  probable  cause.  In  the 


318  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

third  step,  we  are  merely  occupied  in  reflecting  upon  what  par- 
ticular facts  (at  yet  unobserved),  will  be  true  if  our  hypothesis 
should  prove,  by  subsequent  investigation,  to  be  true.  In  the 
fourth  and  final  stage  of  procedure,  we  seek  to  determine 
whether  our  hypothesis  can  be  verified  by  reference  to  actual 
occurrences  in  the  world  about  us,  or  at  least  within  the  domain 
to  which  the  class  of  phenomena  we  are  investigating  belongs. 
Jevons  illustrates  this  well  by  reference  to  the  method  of  pro- 
cedure followed  in  establishing  the  Law  of  Gravitation. 

"  Probably  the  most  important  law  of  nature  ever  discovered 
is  that  called  the  Law  of  Gravity,  which  states  that  all  bodies  in 
space  tend  to  fall  towards  each  other,  with  a  certain  force  depend- 
ing upon  the  magnitudes  of  the  bodies  and  the  distance  between 
them.  It  might  seem  that  we  need  no  aid  of  logic  to  show  us 
that  things  fall  towards  the  earth,  because,  whether  we  throw  up 
a  stone  or  a  book,  a  gold  coin  or  a  feather,  they  will  all  descend 
more  or  less  quickly  to  the  surface  of  the  earth.  The  ancient 
Greeks  observed  this  much,  and  no  doubt  the  ancient  Egyptians 
and  other  peoples  before  them.  But  then  it  does  not  seem  to  be 
true  that  all  bodies  fall;  for  flames  ascend  upwards,  and  in  smoke, 
and  clouds,  and  bubbles  we  have  other  exceptions.  Aristotle,  the 
greatest  of  Greek  philosophers,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  some 
things  were  naturally  heavy  and  tended  to  fall,  while  other  things 
were  naturally  light,  and  tended  to  rise.  Only  about  two  hundred 
years  ago  did  Newton  suc.ceed  in  showing  how  much  better  it  was 
to  make  the  hypothesis  that  all  things  tend  to  fall,  because  he 
could  then  explain  not  only  the  motions  of  flame  and  other  ap- 
parently light  things,  but  also  the  movements  of  the  moon,  sun 
and  planets.  If  we  put  a  pound  weight  into  one  scale  of  a  bal- 
ance, and  only  half  a  pound  into  the  other  scale,  the  latter  will 
of  course  go  up  as  the  former  is  pulled  down  by  the  greater  force. 
So,  if  flame  be  a  lighter  substance  than  the  air  around,  it  will  be 
forced  or  buoyed  up  like  a  cork  in  water.  Thus,  when  we  argue 
deductively,  we  find  that  what  is  apparently  tending  to  rise  up- 
wards may  really  be  tending  to  fall  downwards,  but  is  over- 
powered by  the  greater  tendency  of  other  bodies. 


REASONING.  319 

."  Newton  argued  again  in  this  way :  If  all  bodies  tend  to  fall 
towards  each  other,  all  bodies  ought  to  fall  towards  the  earth. 
Now  the  moon  is  a  body,  and  therefore  it  ought,  according  to 
evident  reasoning  in  the  manner  of  the  syllogism,  to  fall  towards 
the  earth.  Why  does  it  not  do  so,  instead  of  revolving  round  the 
earth  once  in  every  lunar  month?  It  occurred  to  him  that, if  the 
moon  were  not  in  some  way  held  by  the  earth,  it  ought  to  go  off 
flying  away  in  a  straight  line,  like  a  stone  from  a  rapidly  revolv- 
ing sling.  A  moving  body  will  move  in  a  straight  line  unless 
some  force  obliges  it  to  alter  its  course.  Thus  it  appeared  likely 
that  in  reality  the  moon  was  always  falling  towards  the  earth, 
and  that  it  was  this  constant  falling  which  prevented  it  from 
moving  off  in  a  straight  line.  Newton  then  proceeded  to  prove 
by  most  ingenious  mathematical  reasoning  that  the  force  of 
gravity,  if  it  were  such  as  he  supposed  it  to  be,  would  keep  the 
moon  constantly  moving  round  the  earth.  He  also  showed  that, 
if  his  hypothesis  of  gravity  were  true,  the  planets  would  move 
round  the  sun  as  they  do.  He  went  on  to  explain  a  great  many 
peculiarities  in  the  motions  of  the  planets  and  their  satellites. 
He  showed  that  even  comets,  though  they  come  and  go  in  so  ap- 
parently irregular  a  manner,  really  move  in  long  orbits,  as  gravity 
would  make  them  move.  The  tides,  too,  are  another  peculiar 
effect  of  the  same  force.  Thus  his  law  became  a  verified  hypothe- 
sis, one  so  entirely  agreeing  with  facts  that  we  cannot  but  believe 
it  to  be  correct.  It  becomes  an  established  law  of  nature,  and 
is  sometimes  called  a  theory;  but  this  last  word,  theory,  is 
used  with  several  different  meanings,  and  we  should  take 
care  not  to  be  misled  by  it.  Here  it  means  only  a  well-verified 
hypothesis." 

It  ought  to  be  easy  to  see  that  deductive  reasoning  alone  will 
never  teach  us  anything  new,  because  it  only  gives  us  one  propo- 
sition, when  we  already  have  others  from  which  this  one  is  de- 
rived. How.  then  are  we  to  get  the  original  propositions?  This 
must  be  done  by  using  our  eyes,  ears,  and  other  sense  organs  and 
observing  things  about  us,  so  as  to  learn  what  they  really  are. 
This  seems  to  be  evidently  the  proper  way  to  get  knowledge,  and 


320  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

we  may  well  wonder  that  people  ever  thought  differently.  Never- 
theless, for  many  centuries  it  was  believed  to  be  possible  to  arrive 
at  all  necessary  knowledge  by  the  use  of  the  syllogism,  and  men 
preferred  trusting  to  Aristotle,  rather  than  using  their  own  eyes. 
It  used  to  be  said  that  God  made  men  two-legged,  and  Aristotle 
made  them  rational. 

The  riseof  modern  science  may,  p'erhaps, "  be  considered  to  date 
as  far  back  as  the  time  of  Roger  Bacon,  the  wonderful  monk  and 
philosopher  of  Oxford,  who  lived  between  they  ears  1214  and  1292. 
He  was  probably  the  first  in  the  middle  ages  to  assert  that  we 
must  learn  science  by  observing  and  experimenting  on  the  things 
around  us,  and  he  himself  made  many  remarkable  discoveries. 
Galileo,  however,  who  lived  more  than  300  years  later  (1564  to 
1642),  was  the  greatest  of  several  great  men,  who  in  Italy,  France, 
Germany,  or  England,  began  by  degrees  to  show  how  many  im- 
portant truths  could  be  discovered  by  well-directed  observation. 
Before  the  time  of  Galileo,  learned  men  believed  that  large  bodies 
fell  more  rapidly  to  wards  the  earth  than  small  ones,  because  Aris- 
totle said  so.  But  Galileo,  going  to  the  top  of  the  Leaning 
Tower  of  Pisa,  let  fall  two  unequal  stones,  and  proved  to  some 
friends,  whom  he  had  brought  there  to  see  his  experiment,  that 
Aristotle  was  in  error."  It  is  Galileo1  s  spirit  of  going  direct  to 
nature,  and  verifying  our  opinions  and  theories  by  experiment, 
that  has  led  to  all  the  great  discoveries  of  modern  science.  And 
this  is  the  spirit  that  should  be  inculcated  into  the  students  of 
to-day.  Some  so-called  scientists  must  have  the  particular  object 
they  are  called  upon  to  examine*,  soaked  in  paraffine,  sliced  with 
a  microtome  and  boiled  in  corrosive  sublimate,  before  they  exam- 
ine it.  What  is  actually  needed  is  a  band  .of  men  who  are  thor- 
oughly enthusiastic  as  scientists,  and  eager  to  roam  over  fields 
and  through  the  woods  to  study  objects  and  organisms  in  their 
natural  setting  and  environment. 

By  such  inductive  methods  as  those  already  instanced,  the 
child  certainly  reaches  a  large  amount  of  general  knowledge. 
This  knowledge  embraces  the  results  of  his  observation  of  things ; 
the  causes  of  certain  events  in  nature;  just  what  his  own  and 


REASONING.  321 

other  human  actions  can  accomplish,  and  of  analogies  and  dis- 
similarities. As  in  all  other  lines  of  progress,  he  is  exceedingly 
dependent  upon  his  elders,  his  parents  and  teachers,  who  givehim 
instruction,  and  sometimes  he  goes  so  far  as  to  derive  all  of  his 
general  knowledge,  at  least  in  the  initial  stages,  from  what  others 
tell  him . 

Now,  when  the  child  has  gotten  together  a  fund  of  general 
knowledge,  whether  gained  by  his  own  observation,  or  from  in- 
struction by  others  makes  no  great  difference,  he  is  ready  to  pass 
on  to  the  second  stage  of  explicit  reasoning,  known  as  deduction. 
You  remember  that  by  induction  is  meant  the  process  of  reason- 
ing upward  from  particular  facts  to  a  general  truth  or  principle. 
Now,  deduction,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  process  of  reasoning 
downward  from  a  general  truth  to  some  particular  concrete  case. 
Thus  a  child  whose  mind  has  been  fed  on  some  of  the  "  goody- 
goody  "  books  which  tell  him  of  scores  of  boys  who  were  drowned 
by  going  boating  on  Sunday,  or  of  a  number  who  had  their  arms 
broken  while  stealing  apples,  is  liable  to  regard  it  as  a  general 
rule  that  all  boys  who  go  boating  on  Sunday  will  be  drowned,  or 
that  all  boys  who  steal  apples  will  have  an  arm  broken.  These 
general  principles  he  reaches  by  a  process  of  induction.  When 
he  comes  to  apply  this  general  principle  to  himself,  and  says,  "  If 
I  go  boating  on  Sunday,  I  shall  be  drowned,"  he  makes  use  of 
deductive  reasoning.  He  notices  that  his  dog  suffers  pain,  and  is 
told  that  all  animals  suffer  pain,  so  he  concludes,  as  a  result  of 
deduction  from  this  general  statement,  that  the  cow,  horse,  or 
sheep  suffers  pain.  The  form  of  deductive  reasoning,  when  fully 
expressed — when  made  explicit  in  terms  of  language — furnishes 
us  what  is  known  iji  logic  as  the  syllogism.  Thus: 

All  animals  die. 

My  dog  u  Jip  "  is  an  animal. 

Therefore  my  dog  "Jip  "  will  die. 

This  is  called  an  affirmative  syllogism,  because  its  propo- 
sitions are  affirmative  judgments  leading  to  an  affirmative  con- 
clusion. 

L.  P.— 21 


322  PRACTICAL  LESSUNS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

As  an  example  of  a  negative  syllogism  we  have : 

No  horse  eats  meat. 
"  Prince"  is  a  horse. 
Therefore,  "  Prince"  does  not  eat  meat. 

For  here  we  reach  a  negative  conclusion.  The  essential  pro- 
cess here,  in  both  syllogisms,  as  in  induction,  is  detecting  simi- 
larity or  analogy.  We  bring  the  particular  case  of  the  dog 
"Jip"  under  the  general  rule  or  principle  that  "animals  die," 
and  we  do  this  because  we  detect  similarity  and  identity  between 
"  Jip"  and  other  animals,  for  the  particular  case  must  obey  the 
behests  of  reason  and  come  under  the  general  rule.  The  same 
holds  good  in  the  negative  syllogism.  We  bring  the  particular 
case  of  the  horse  "Prince"  under  the  general  rule  "No  horse 
eats  meat,"  because  we  know  that  "  Prince"  is  like  other  horses, 
or  better,  is  identical  with  other  horses  in  his  main  characteris- 
tics. He  must  be  like  other  horses  in  respect  to  certain  of  the 
more  important  attributes,  in  order  to  be  a  horse. 

Now,  the  detection  of  similarity,  analogy  and  identity  is  the 
essential  process  in  deductive  reasoning,  as  it  is  in  the  inductive 
form.  Yet  it  must  also  be  remembered  that  discrimination  plays 
an  important  part.  Especially  in  those  arguments  where  we 
reach  negative  conclusions,  are  we  engaged  in  this  work  of  dis- 
criminating among  the  various  marks,  characteristics  and  quali- 
ties that  are  presented.  Thus  when  I  argue : 

Only  sound  horses  can  run  fast. 
This  horse  is  lame  (or  unsound). 
Therefore,  this  horse  cannot  run  fast, 

I  am  making  use  of  certain  powers  of  discrimination  in  separ- 
ating a  particular  horse  from  a  general  class  of  horses. 

The  process  of  deduction  may  lead  to  a  valid  or  invalid  con- 
clusion; that  the  conclusion  may  be  valid  the  processes  of  deduc- 
tion must  be  regulated.  It  is  the  business  of  formal  logic  to 
point  out  the  requirements  that  must  be  satisfied  in  order  to 
have  perfectly  valid  reasoning. 


REASONING.  323 

Errors  and  mistakes  in  reasoning  are  called  fallacies,  that  is, 
modes  of  reasoning  which  deceive.  But  we  ought  not  to  confuse 
a  false  opinion  with  the  bad  reasoning  by  which  it  is  reached. 
The  word  fallacy  is,  in  fact,  an  ambiguous  one.  In  one  sense  it  is 
a  fallacy  to  say  that  the  moon  governs  the  weather,  because  long 
and  careful  inquiries  have  shown  that  there  is  no  correspondence 
between  the  changes  of  the  moon  and  the  changes  of  the  weather. 
But  this  is  a  fallacious  or  false  opinion;  the  logical  fallacy  con- 
sists in  the  bad  reasoning  which  has  by  degrees  led  people  to  be- 
lieve in  the  moon's  power.  On  one  or  two  occasions  a  person 
may  notice  a  change  of  weather  on  the  day  of  new  moon,  and 
he  thinks  it  so  singular  that  he  tells  his  neighbors  of  the  fact,  and 
they  remember  perhaps  to  have  noticed  the  same  thing  once  or 
twice.  But  it  is  bad  reasoning  to  argue  that,  because  on  a  few 
occasions  things  happen  one  after  the  other,  therefore  the  one  is 
the  cause  of  the  other. 

But  before  indicating  the  usual  sources  of  fallacious  reasoning, 
it  might  be  well  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  in  ordinary 
practical  reasoning  the  processes  are  seldom  formally  expressed 
in  the  language  of  full  and  complete  syllogisms.  Indeed,  there 
are  exceedingly  few  persons  who  can  detect  the  syllogistic  pro- 
cess in  their  ordinary  chains  of  reasoning.  Locke's  estimate  of 
the  practical  utility  of  the  syllogism  is  well  worth  quoting  here. 
It  is  selected  from  his  famous  "  Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing." 

"  Of  what  use,  then,  are  syllogisms?  I  answer,  their  main  and 
chief  use  is  in  the  schools,  where  men  are  allowed  without  shame 
to  deny  the  agreement  of  ideas  that  do  manifestly  agree;  or  out 
of  the  schools,  to  those  who  from  hence  have  learned  without 
shame  to  deny  the  connection  of  ideas,  which  even  to  themselves 
is  visible.  But  to  an  ingenuous  searcher  after  truth,  who  has  no 
other  aim  but  to  find  it,  there  is  no  need  of  any  such  form  to 
force  the  allowing  of  the  inference;  the  truth  and  reasonableness 
of  it  is  better  seen  in  ranging  of  the  ideas  in  a  simple  and  plain 
order ;  and  hence  it  is  that  men,  in  their  own  inquiries  after  truth, 
never  use  syllogisms  to  convince  themselves  (or  in  teaching 


324  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

others  to  instruct  willing  learners).  .  .  .  But  if  men  skilled 
in  and  used,  to  syllogisms,  find  them  assisting  to  their  reason  in 
the  discovery  of  truth,  I  think  they  ought  to  make  use  of  them. 
All  that  I  aim  at,  is,  that  they  should  not  ascribe  more  to  these 
forms  than  belongs  to  them,  and  think  that  men  have  no  use, 
or  not  so  full  a  use,  of  their  reasoning  faculties  without  them. 
Some  eyes  want  spectacles  to  see  things  clearly  and  distinctly; 
but  let  not  those  tha't  use  them  therefore  say  nobody  can  see 
clearly  without  them;  those  who  do  so  will  bethought  in  favor  of 
art  (which,  perhaps,  they  are  beholden  to),  a  little  too  much  to 
depress  and  discredit  nature.  Reason,  by  its  own  penetration, 
where  it  is  strong  and  exercised,  usually  sees  quicker  and  clearer 
without  the  syllogism.  If  use  of  those  spectacles  has  so  dimmed 
its  sight,  that  it  cannot  without  them  see  consequences  or  incon- 
sequences in  argumentation,  I  am  not  so  unreasonable  as  to  be 
against  the  using  them.  Every  one  knows  what  bests  fits  his 
own  sight;  but  let  him  not  thence  conclude  all  in  the  dark,  who 
use  not  just  the  same  helps  that  he  finds  a  need  of." 

Without  going  into  the  minute  details  of  logical  fallacy,  we 
may  indicate  certain  general  causes  of  defective  reasoning  and 
erroneous  deduction.  We  have  emphasized  the  fact  that  reason- 
ing consists  chiefly  in  a  detection  of  similarity  and  identity.  If 
this  is  true,  then  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  the  great  source  of 
invalid  deduction  lies  in  a  sort  of  mental  confusion  in  which 
things  that  are  actually  similar  are  not  so  regarded,  while  those 
that  are  essentially  unlike  are  conceived  to  be  similar — there  is 
a  lack  of  discriminative  ability.  The  erroneous  reasoner  does 
not  see  where  similarity  leaves  off  and  difference  begins.  Chil- 
dren are  extremely  liable  to  this  error,  because  their  intense 
eagerness  to  find  a  reason  for  a  fact,  a  cause  or  explanation  for 
an  event,  may  precipitate  them  at  once  into  such  an  intellectual 
confusion  that  loose  reasoning  cannot  fail  to  result. 

Perhaps  the  most  common  sort  of  error  in  deductive  argument 
is  the  ambiguity  of  terms,  for  in  such  a  case  the  mind  fails  to 
detect  the  various  shades  of  meaning  that  can  belong  to  the  same 
word.  Thus: 


REASONING.  325 

No  designing  person  ought  to  be  trusted. 

The  architect  is  a  designer. 

Therefore  architects  ought  not  be  trusted. 

In  this  bald  case  it  is  easy  enough  to  detect  the  source  of  the 
fallacy.  But  there  are  instances  where  the  ambiguity  is  more 
subtle,  and  requires  a  keener  logical  insight  for  its  detection.  The 
reasoner  must  always  be  on  the  alert  for  the  ambiguous  use  of 
terms,  and  no  source  of  confusion  is  more  fruitful  of  error  than 
the  simplest  words  and  language  that  are  ambiguous  in  their 
meaning. 

A  word  with  two  distinct  meanings  is  really  two  words.  If  a 
person  were  to  argue  that  his  ailment  is  a  cold,  and  that  all  cold 
is  dispelled  by  heat,  it  would  be  absurd  thus  to  confuse  together 
a  cold  or  catarrh  with  the  absence  of  heat.  But  in  many  cases  it 
is  by  no  means  easy  to  see  that  we  are  using  the  same  word  with 
two  meanings. 

Take  such  common  words  as  chair,  bill,  table,  paper  and  ball, 
and  seek  out  the  many  different  meanings  that  can  be  assigned 
to  each  one.  If  you  do  this  carefully  you  will  quite  readily  see 
how  it  is  that  ambiguity  can  easily  become  a  source  of  error  in 
reasoning.  To  take  the  old  illustrations  of  Jevons : 

"  Changes  of  the  meaning  of  words  are  usually  effected  by  no 
particular  person  and  with  no  distinct  purpose,  but  by  a  sort  of 
unconscious  instinct  in  a  number  of  persons  using  the  name.  In 
the  language  of  science,  however,  changes  are  often  made  pur- 
posely, and  with  a  clear  apprehension  of  the  generalization  im- 
plied. Thus  soap  in  ordinary  life  is  applied  only  to  a  compound 
of  soda  or  potash  with  fat,  but  chemists  have  purposely  extended 
the  name  so  as  to  include  any  compound  of  a  metallic  salt  with 
a  fatty  substance.  Accordingly  there  are  such  things  as  lime- 
soap  arid  lead-soap,  which  latter  is  employed  in  making  common 
diachylon  plaster.  (He  might  have  added  to  this  list  "  soap  "  as 
used  by  thepolitical  heeler.)  Alcohol  at  first  denoted  the  product 
of  ordinary  fermentation  commonly  called  spirits  of  wine,  but 
chemists  having  discovered  that  many  other  substances  had  a 
theoretical  composition  closely  resembling  spirits  of  wine,  the 


326  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

name  was  adopted  for  the  whole  class,  and  a  long  enumeration 
of  different  kinds  of  alcohol  will  be  found  in  Dr.  Roscoe's  "Les- 
sons on  Chemistry."  The  number  of  known  alcohols  is  likewise 
subject  to  indefinite  increase  by  the  progress  of  discovery.  Every 
one  of  the  chemical  terms,  acid,  alkali,  metal,  alloy,  earth,  ether, 
oil,  gas,  salt,  may  be  shown  to  have  undergone  great  generali- 
zations. 

' 'In  other  sciences  there  is  hardly  a  less  supply  of  instances. 
A  lens  originally  meant  a  lenticular-shaped  or  double  convex 
piece  of  glass,  that  being  the  kind  of  glass  most  frequently  used 
by  opticians.  But  as  glasses  of  other  shapes  came  to  be  used 
along  with  lenses,  the  name  was  extended  to  concave  or  even  to 
perfectly  flat  pieces  of  glass.  The  words  lever,  plane,  cone,  cylin- 
der, arc,  conic  section, curve,  prism,  magnet,  pendulum,  ray, light, 
and  many  others,  have  been  similarly  generalized. 

"In  common  language  we  may  observe  that  even  proper  or 
singular  names  are  often  generalized,  as  when  in  the  time  of  Cicero 
a  good  actor  was  called  a  Roscius,  after  an  actor  of  pre-eminent 
talent.  The  name  Caesar  was  adopted  by  the  successor  of  Julius 
Caesar  as  an  official  name  of  the  emperor,  with  which  it  grad- 
ually became  synonymous,  so  that  in  the  present  day  the  kaisers 
of  Germany  and  Austria  and  the  czars  of  Russia,  both  take  their 
title  from  Caesar.  The  celebrated  tower  built  by  the  king  of 
Egypt  on  the  island  of  Pharos,  at  the  entrance  of  the  harbor  of 
Alexandria,  has  caused  lighthouses  to  be  called  phares  in  French, 
and  pharos  in  obsolete  English.  From  the  celebrated  Roman 
general,  Quintus  Fabius  Maximus,  any  one  who  avoids  bringing 
a  contest  to  a  crisis  is  said  to  pursue  a  Fabian  policy. 

"The  word  foot  has  suffered  several  curious  but  very  evident 
transfers  of  meaning.  Originally  it  denoted  the  foot  of  a  man 
or  an  animal,  and  is  probably  connected  in  a  remote  manner  with 
the  Latin  pes,  pedis;  but  since  the  length  of  the  foot  is  naturally 
employed  as  a  rude  measure  of  length,  it  came  to  be  applied  to  a 
fixed  measure  of  length;  and  as  the  foot  is  at  the  bottom  of  the 
body,  the  name  was  extended  by  analogy  to  the  foot  of  a  moun- 
tain, or  the  foot  of  a  table ;  by  a  further  extension,  any  position, 


REASONING.  327 

plan,  reason,  or  argument  on  which  we  place  ourselves  and  rely, 
is  called  the  foot  or  footing.  The  same  word  also  denotes  sol- 
diers who  fight  on  their  feet,  or  infantry,  and  the  measured  part 
of  a  verse  having  a  definite  length.  That  these  very  different 
meanings  are  naturally  connected  with  the  original  meaning  is 
evident  from  the  fact  that  the  Latin  and  Greek  words  for  foot  are 
subject  to  exactly  similar  series  of  ambiguities. 

"  It  would  be  a  long  task  to  trace  out  completely  the  various 
eind  often  contradictory  meanings  of  the  word  fellow.  Originally 
a  fellow  was  what  follows  another,  that  is,  a  companion;  thus  it 
came  to  mean  the  other  of  a  pair,  as  one  shoe  is  the  fellow  of  the 
other,  or  simply  an  equal,  as  when  we  say  that  Shakespeare  < hath 
not  a  fellow.'  From  the  simple  meaning  of  companion,  again  it 
comes  to  denote  vaguely  a  person,  as  in  the  question,  <  What  fel- 
low is  that?'  but  then  there  is  a  curious  confusion  of  deprecia- 
tory and  endearing  power  in  the  word ;  when  a  man  is  called  a 
mere  fellow,  or  simply  a  fellow  in  a  particular  tone  of  voice,  the 
name  is  one  of  severe  contempt ;  alter  the  tone  of  the  voice  of  the 
connected  words  in  the  least  degree,  and  it  becomes  one  of  the 
most  sweet  and  endearing  appellations,  as  when  we  speak  of  a 
dear  or  good  fellow.  We  may  still  add  the  technical  meanings  of 
the  name,  as  applied  in  the  case  of  a  Fellow  of  a  college  or  of  a 
learned  society. 

"Another  good  instance  of  the  growth  of  a  number  of  different 
meanings  from  a  single  root  is  found  in  the  word  post.  Originally 
a  post  was  something  posited,  or  placed  firmly  in  the  ground, 
such  as  an  upright  piece  of  wood  or  stone ;  such  meaning  still  re- 
mains in  the  cases  of  a  lamp-post,  a  gate-post,  signal-post,  etc. 
As  a  post  would  often  be  used  to  mark  a  fixed  spot  of  ground  (e.  g., 
a  mile-post),  it  came  to  mean  the  fixed  or  appointed  place  where 
the  post  was  placed,  as  in  a  military  post,  the  post  of  danger,  the 
post  of  honor,  etc.  The  fixed  places  where  horses  were  kept  in 
readiness  to  facilitate  rapid  traveling,  as  in  the  times  of  the 
Roman  empire,  were  thus  called  posts,  and  thence  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  arrangement  for  the  conveyance  of  persons  or  news  came 
to  be  called  the  posts.  The  name  has  retained  an  exactly  similar 


328  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

meaning  to  the  present  day  in  most  parts  of  Europe,  and  we  still 
use  it  in  post-chaise,  post-boy,  post-horse,  and  postilion.  A  sys- 
tem of  post  conveyance  for  letters  having  been  organized  for  about 
two  centuries  in  England  and  other  countries,  this  is  perhaps  the 
meaning  most  closely  associated  with  the  word  post  at  present,  and 
a  number  of  expressions  have  arisen,  such  as  post  office,  postage, 
postal  guide,  postman,  postmaster,  postal  telegraph,  etc.  Curi- 
ously enough,  we  now  have  iron  letter-posts,  in  which  the  word 
post  is  restored  exactly  to  its  original  meaning." 

That  misuse  of  words  is  the  great  cause  of  error  in  our  think- 
ing, was  well  expressed  by  Locke  over  two  hundred  years  ago : 

"  For  he  that  shall  well  consider  the  errors  and  obscurity,  the 
mistakes  and  confusion  that  are  spread  in  the  world  by  an  ill  use 
of  words,  will  find  some  reason  to  doubt  whether  language,  as  it 
has  been  employed,  has  contributed  more  to  the  improvement  or 
hindrance  of  knowledge  amongst  mankind.  How  many  are  there, 
that,  when  they  would  think  on  things,  fix  their  thoughts  only 
on  words,  especially  when  they  would  apply  their  minds  to  moral 
matters;  and  who,  then,  can  wonder  if  the  result  of  such  contem- 
plations and  reasonings  about  little  more  than  sounds,  whilst 
the  ideas  they  annex  to  them,  are  very  confused  and  unsteady,  or 
perhaps  none  at  all — who  can  wonder,  I  say,  that  such  thoughts 
and  reasonings  end  in  nothing  but  obscurity  and  mistake,  with- 
out any  clear  judgment  or  knowledge?  " 

It  is  an  easy  matter,  then,  to  perceive  the  necessity  of  regulat- 
ing the  reasoning  power  in  its  procedure  from  the  known  to  the 
unknown,  its  search  after  explanations  and  sufficient  reasons  for 
all  that  occurs  and  exists.  This  regulation  of  the  processes  of 
reasoning  must  come  chiefly  under  the  guidance  and  stimulation 
of  others.  The  function  of  the  teacher  in  this  connection  is  an 
exceedingly  important  one,  yet  an  extremely  difficult  one  to 
serve. 

In  the  earliest  stages  of  the  child's  development, parents  are 
called  upon  to  answer  many  questions  prompted  by  the  child's 
curiosity  and  desire  for  explanation.  Do  parents  and  teachers 
realize  what  a  momentous  period  this  is  for  the  child? 


REASONING.  329 

are  so  capricious  in  their  questionings  that  we  are  apt  to  think 
their  inquiries,  as  to  the  why  and  how  of  things,  are  made  from 
force  of  habit,  or  are  put  in  a  half-mechanical  sort  of  way  with- 
out any  real  desire  for  information.  There  is  no  saying  more 
true  than  the  one  to  the  effect  that  children  and  fools  can  ask 
questions  which  wise  men  cannot  answer.  But  it  is  erroneous  to 
think  that  children's  questions  are  purposeless,  or  put  for  the 
mere  sake  of  teasing  parents  or  teacher,  though  this  may  some- 
times seem  to  be  the  case.  Once  when  my  vacation  was  drawing 
to  a  close,  a  little  fellow  of  four  observed  me  packing  my  valise 
as  I  was  preparing  for  the  journey  back  to  college,  and  the 
following  conversation  took  place : 

Question.  "  What  are  you  packing  your  valise  for?  " 

Answer.  "  Because  I  am  going  away." 

Q.  "What  are  you  going  away  for?" 

A.  "  Oh,  to  get  to  work." 

Q.  "  Well,  what  do  you  want  to  get  to  work  for  ?  " 

A.  "  To  earn  money." 

Q.  "  Well,  what  do  you  want  to  earn  money  for  ?  " 

A.  "  To  get  through  the  world." 

Q.  "  What  do  you  want  to  get  through  the  world  for?  " 

Under  such  circumstances  it  is  rather  hard  to  follow  Locke's 
advice  when  he  says : 

1  ( Encourage  the  child's  inquisitiveness  all  you  can  by  satisfy- 
ing his  demands  and  informing  his  judgment  as  far  as  possible." 
Yet  all  of  us,  in  spite  of  some  tantalizing  and  trying  experiences, 
believe  that  a  good  rule  to  follow  is  to  give  an  explanation  when- 
ever the  nature  of  the  subject  will  permit  such  an  explanation  in 
simple,  clear  and  lucid  form.  And  when  we  come  to  think  o! 
children  as  capricious  in  their  questioning  and  are  overwrought 
by  the  tantalizing  and  irrepressible  "Why,"  let  us  remember  that 
their  horizon  is  exceedingly  limited,  so  limited  that  they  are  con- 
stantly chafing  on  account  of  it.  Furthermore,  we  must  remem- 
ber that  one  of  the  chief  ways  of  extending  this  horizon  is  to 
furnish  the  child  information  in  response  to  his  eager,  impulsive 
and  instinctive  "  Why," 


330  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

And  again,  we  all  know  that  the  child  demands,  and  naturally 
and  rightfully  too,  the  intellectual  sympathy  of  his  elders.  It  is 
only  in  manhood,  when  there  are  no  longer  teachers  at  hand,  that 
the  observations  and  inferences  required  for  early  guidance  are 
expected  to  be  made  without  assistance.  In  the  constant  but 
none  the  less  sincere  "  Why"  of  the  child,  nature  is  perpetually 
thrusting  the  true  method  of  education  upon  us. 

However,  a  word  of  caution  is  not  entirely  out  of  place.  We 
must  be  careful  not  to  indulge  children  too  much  in  the  way  of 
questioning — that  is,  we  should  be  careful  to  avoid  promoting  a 
sort  of  intellectual  laziness,  and  at  the  same  time  avoid  making 
them  entirely  dependent  upon  others.  It  is,  as  we  have  previously 
stated,  far  better  to  show  a  child  the  route  which  leads  to  the  cor- 
rect answer  of  his  question,  than  to  tell  him  the  answer  outright, 
if  the  route  be  not  a  complicated  one,  and  the  desired  destina- 
tion not  removed  too  great  a  distance  from  the  child's  present 
point  of  view.  As  Herbert  Spencer  has  said:  "To  tell  a  child 
this  or  that,  is  not  to  teach  him  how  to  observe,  but  simply  to 
make  him  the  recipient  of  another's  observations  ...  de- 
priving him  of  the  pleasures  that  result  from  successful  activity." 

But  early  training  of  the  reasoning  powers  involves  much  more 
than  the  mere  answering  of  the  simple,  spontaneous  questions  of 
children.  Not  only  may  the  child  question  you^  but  you  must 
question  the  child  as  to  the  reasons  of  things,  and  the  causes  of 
what  he  sees  happening  in  the  world  about  him.  A  question  sets 
the  child  to  observe  more  closely,  and  each  new  item  gained  by 
observation  is  so  much  new  food  for  reflection.  So  by  your 
query  as  to  the  cause  of  a  certain  phenomenon,  you  stimulate 
his  reasoning  powers  by  raising  new  problems  within  his  mind. 
I  think  the  most  interesting  lesson  I  ever  received  with  reference 
to  the  different  densities  of  the  various  liquids  grew  out  of  a 
thoughtful  teacher's  question.  It  was  this,  "Why  does  beer 
foam  and  wine  sparkle?" 

Furthermore,  do  you  not  see  that  by  asking  the  why  of  things 
you  are  continually  impressing  upon  the  mind  of  the  child  the 
principle  that  every  event,  every  occurrence,  has  its  cause  and 


REASONING.  331 

its  explanation.  As  parent  or  teacher  it  is  your  privilege,  yes,  your 
duty,  to  fix  a  habit  of  inquiry  in  the  child's  mind,  by  continually 
calling  his  attention  to  certain  phenomena  as  they  take  place, 
and  encouraging  him  to  find  out  the  causes,  in  so  far  as  is  possi- 
ble, by  appeal  to  his  own  mental  capital  and  powers  of  observa- 
tion. Don't  raise  queries  that  have  no  touch  or  point  of  inti- 
mate contact  with  his  every-day  experiences.  You  know  all  that 
is  meant  by  the  phrase  "to  explain"  is  the  bringing  of  some  un- 
known fact  or  effect  under  some  known  class  of  experiences. 
Children  tend  to  do  this  continually.  They  are  ever  going  back 
to  their  past  experiences  in  their  quest  for  analogies  that  apply 
to  the  case  under  consideration.  This  is  especially  seen  in  the 
names  children  give  to  new  objects. 

My  own  little  girl  (five  years  old)  has  insisted  upon  calling  the 
mid  vein  of  a  leaf  its  "  spinal  cord,"  ever  since  I  showed  her  the 
spinal  cord  of  a  cat  (in  situ)  when  she  was  in  my  laboratory  six 
months  or  more  ago.  Certain  savages  are  said  to  have  called 
horses  big  dogs,  on  seeing  them  for  the  first  time,  because  they 
were  more  like  dogs  than  anything  they  had  ever  seen. 

By  systematic  training,  then,  and  systematic  training  only, 
can  the  reasoning  powers  be  developed  in  a  proper  manner,  and 
the  mind  of  the  child  prevented  from  falling  into  such  fallacious 
reasoning  as  was  instanced  earlier  in  the  chapter.  Do  your  best 
to  prevent  too  hasty  inductions  on  the  part  of  the  child ;  do  not 
permit  him  to  take  certain  accidental  features  as  essential  char- 
acteristics of  an  object.  For  example,  do  not  let  him  insist  that 
all  apples  are  red  because  the  one  he  is  now  eating  happens  to 
be  of  that  color— make  it  perfectly  plain  to  him  that  the  color 
of  the  apple  is  purely  an  accidental  feature  and  not  an  essential 
characteristic. 

For  the  main  source  of  error  in  inductive  reasoning  (and  most 
of  our  reasoning  belongs  to  this  class),  lies  in  the  fact  that  we 
make  our  inductions  too  hastily.  And  in  deductive  reasoning, 
make  it  plain  to  the  young  mind  just  what  cases  do  come  under 
the  general  rule  he  has  discovered,  and  what  cases  do  not. 

But  now  comes  the  most  important  question  of  all  that  have 


332  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

been  raised  and  discussed  in  this  chapter.  What  subjects  or 
studies  best  exercise  the  pupil's  reasoning  powers  ?  You  cannot 
assign  young  children,  or  even  high  school  pupils,  lessons  in 
formal  logic.  And  even  if  the  child  could  comprehend  the  full 
import  of  all  the  rules  of  logic  that  have  been  devised  since  the 
time  of  Aristotle,  he  would  not  of  necessity  be  a  good  reasoner, 
any  more  than  the  person  who  reads  the  best  book  on  athletic 
training  could  develop  his  muscles  while  simply  languishing  in  a 
" Sleepy  Hollow "  chair.  To  learn  even  to  "skin  the  cat,"  one 
must  engage  in  physical  exercise;  he  must  also  indulge  in  a  set 
of  routine  exercises  to  develop  his  arms  different  from  the  one 
employed  to  develop  his  chest.  So  in  mental  training.  The  pow- 
ers of  mind  are  developed  through  exercise.  Now  the  question 
is:  What  special  routine  of  study  is  it  best  to  employ,  in  ordei 
to  so  exercise  the  mind  of  the  child  that  its  reasoning  powers  will 
be  best  furthered  in  their  path  of  development? 

The  mother  and  kindergarten  teacher  can  do  much  in  influencing 
the  direction  of  the  child's  questionings,  thus  training  his  reason- 
ing powers.  But  the  continued  education  of  this  reasoning  fac- 
ulty is  the  problem  of  the  teacher  in  the  common  school.  Of  course 
all  studies,  in  the  hands  of  the  skillful,  keen,  wide-awake  teacher, 
will  be  made  to  contribute  something  toward  bringing  about  this 
rational  development.  Yet  there  are  subjects,  the  study  of  which 
is  especially  suited  to  stimulate  the  reasoning  faculty,  and  guide 
it  into  the  best  possible  manifestations  of  its  activity. 

One  of  the  best  studies  for  this  purpose  is  physical  geography. 
In  the  study  of  physical  geography  the  child  comes  into  actual 
contact  with  natural  phenomena;  and  for  countless  reasons  the 
study  of  physical  geography  ought  come  before  the  study  of 
political  or  descriptive  geography.  In  the  study  of  physical 
geography,  the  child  exercises  his  mind  in  reasoning  about  the 
causes  of  natural  phenomena.  Better  acquaint  the  child  with 
the  real  explanation  of  the  hillside  spring,  that  bubbles  forth 
from  the  ground,  or  inform  him  as  to  the  principle  that  underlies 
the  existence  of  the  artesian  well,  or  let  him  know  the  causes  of 
earthquakes  —  much  better  and  much  more  natural  is  this  food 


REASONING.  333 

for  the  child's  mind  (because  more  easily  assimilated),  than  all 
you  can  cram  into  him  concerning  monarchy,  duchy,  republic, 
dukedom,  boundary  lines,  and  the  like. 

If  history  be  well  taught,  it  will  also  be  a  mighty  lever  in  rais- 
ing the  child  in  the  scale  of  knowledge  and  in  developing  his 
powers  of  reasoning. 

For  historical  study,  properly  conducted,  develops  the  child's 
power  of  tracing  analogies,  of  reasoning  as  to  the  causes  and 
effects  of  human  action,  and  deducing  certain  general  principles 
that  govern  men  in  their  national  life.  But  sad  to  say,  most 
history  is  poorly  taught.  We  regret  that  what  Mr.  Spencer  says 
with  regard  to  the  worthlessness  of  ordinary  history  is  so  true. 
We  here  reproduce  what  he  says,  in  the  hope  that  it  will  help  some 
of  us  to  modify  our  courses  in  history  accordingly: 

"  But,  as  already  more  than  once  hinted,  the  historic  informa- 
tion commonly  given  is  almost  valueless  for  purposes  of  guidance. 
Scarcely  any  of  the  facts  set  down  in  our  school  histories,  and 
very  few  even  of  those  contained  in  the  more  elaborate  works 
written  for  adults,  give  any  clue  to  theright  principles  of  political 
action.  The  biographies  of  monarchs  (and  our  children  com- 
monly learn  little  else)  throw  scarcely  any  light  upon  the  science 
of  society.  Familiarity  with  court  intrigues,  plots,  usurpations, 
or  the  like,  and  with  all  the  personalities  accompanying  them, 
aids  very  little  in  elucidating  the  principles  upon  which  national 
welfare  depends.  We  read  of  some  squabble  for  power,  that  it 
led  to  a  pitched  battle ;  that  such  and  such  were  the  names  of  the 
generals  and  their  leading  subordinates;  that  they  each  had  so 
many  thousand  infantry  and  cavalry,  and  so  many  cannon ;  that 
they  arranged  their  forces  in  this  or  that  order;  that  they  ma- 
neuvered, attacked,  and  fell  back  in  certain  ways;  that  at  this 
part  of  the  day  such  disasters  were  sustained,  and  at  that,  such 
ad  vantages  gained;  that  in  one  particular  moment  some  leading 
officer  fell,  while  in  another  a  certain  regiment  was  decimated; 
that  after  all  the  changing  fortunes  of  the  fight,  the  victory  was 
gained  by  this  or  that  army,  and  that  so  many  were  killed  and 
wounded  on  each  side,  and  so  many  captured  by  the  conquerors. 


334  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

.  .  .  That  which  constitutes  history,  properly  so  called,  is  in 
great  part  omitted  from  works  on  the  subject.  Only  of  late  years 
have  historians  commenced  giving  us,  in  any  considerable  quan- 
tity, the  truly  valuable  information.  As  in  past  ages  the  king  was 
everything  and  the  people  nothing,  so  in  past  histories  the  do- 
ings of  the  king  fill  the  entire  picture,  to  which  the  national  Hfe 
forms  but  an  obscure  background.  While  only  now,  when  the 
welfare  of  nations  rather  than  of  rulers  is  becoming  the  domi- 
nant idea,  are  historians  beginning  to  occupy  themselves  with 
the  phenomena  of  social  progress.  That  which  it  really  concerns 
us  to  know,  is  the  natural  history  of  society." 

But  above  and  beyond  all  other  subjects  in  real  value  as  an 
agency  to  promote  the  development  and  correct  activity  of  the 
reasoning  powers,  there  is  nothing  like  the  study  of  the  natural 
sciences,  be  it  botany,  zoology,  geology,  physiology  or  what. 
Any  natural  science  study  serves  to  stimulate  the  reasoning  pow- 
ers into  exercise,  at  the  same  time  developing  and  strengthening 
them,  and,  what  is  still  better,  guiding  them  into  correct  modes 
of  activity.  Science  is  "  knowledge  systematized,"  and  a  study 
of  science  tends  to  make  one  more  systematic  and  correct  in  his 
thinking.  Science  is  knowledge  in  its  most  precise  form  of  ex- 
pression, and  students  of  science  strive  harder  and  harder  to 
make  their  thinking  more  precise  that  their  conclusions  may  also 
be  more  exact.  Each  of  the  sciences  sets  out  with  observation 
and  experiment,  by  means  of  which  it  hopes  to  establish  certain 
general  principles  that  hold  true  within  the  domain  of  that  par- 
ticular science.  Then  it  proceeds  to  seek  out  all  the  phenomena 
and  occurrences  that  come  under  the  scope  of  this  general  princi- 
ple and  applies  these  established  principles  to  all  the  particular 
facts  deductively.  Science  trains  the  reasoning  powers  into  an 
orderly,  systematic  and  precise  manner  of  activity.  The  boy  who 
comes  to  school  with  a  garter-snake  in  his  pocket  (even  if  he 
bring  it  to  frighten  the  girls),  the  one  who  gathers  specimen*  of 
butterflies,  bugs  and  beetles,  the  one  who  tears  his  clothes  in 
climbing  trees  for  birds'  nests,  or  the  one  who  wears  out  the  linings 
of  his  pockets  with  a  collection  of  arrowheads  he  has  found— any 


REASONING.  335 

and  all  of  these  boys  are  a  long  distance  ahead  of  the  boy  who  is 
compelled  to  bound  Australia,  or  extract  the  square  root  of  the 
largest  series  of  numbers  ever  put  between  the  covers  of  an  arith- 
metic. 

Science  lessons  can  be  given  in  a  most  interesting  manner. 
For  the  first  lessons  nothing  better  is  needed,  as  a  guide  on  which 
they  may  base  their  own  observations,  than  a  good  edition  of 
"  Robinson  Crusoe."  In  this  interesting  tale  the  child  learns  of  a 
man's  struggles  with  the  elements  and  forces  of  nature.  The 
child  is  thus  brought  face  to  face  with  nature  in  the  interesting 
story  of  the  life  of  this  one  man.  The  methods  this  hermit  em- 
ployed to  protect  himself  from  nature's  forces,  the  means  used 
by  him  to  prepare  his  food,  can  and  will  be  compared  by  the  child 
himself  with  his  own  experiences  and  environment.  The  habita- 
tion of  Crusoe  will  be  compared  with  his  own  home;  the  crude 
cooking  utensils  of  the  hermit  are  compared  with  those  which  the 
child's  own  mother  makes  use  of  in  the  family  kitchen;  the 
clothing  of  Crusoe  is  compared  with  the  child's  own  or  that  of  his 
father.  What  better 'model  of  inductive  reasoning  can  the  child 
follow  than  that  employed  by  this  lonely  hermit  when  he  discov- 
ers the  track  on  the  shore  sands  of  his  island  home?  By  taking 
up  this  interesting  tale  you  touch  the  child's  life  on  every  side; 
you  acquaint  him  with  some  of  the  greatest  truths  of  modern 
science,  and  you  at  the  same  time  stimulate  his  powers  of  reason- 
ing to  exercise  themselves  in  the  most  precise  and  methodical 
way,  and  in  a  manner  to  strengthen  and  develop  them  most  fully 
and  satisfactorily.  The  natural  sciences  "provide  the  best  train- 
ing of  the  mind  in  the  patient,  accurate  investigation  of  facts, 
and  the  cautious  building  up  of  general  truths,  on  the  firm  basis 
of  actual  observation" 

With  reference  to  deductive  reasoning,  it  is  most  probably 
true,  that  geometry  contributes  the  most  in  the  way  of  develop- 
ment of  one's  latent  reasoning  power.  At  least  the  kind  of 
geometry  Professor  Wyse  insists  upon,  would  accomplish  much 
in  this  direction.  Here  is  his  own  statement : 

"A  child  has  been  in  the  habit  of  using  cubes  for  arithmetic; 


336  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

let  him  also  use  them  for  the  elements  of  geometry.  I  would 
begin  with  -solids,  the  reverse  of  the  usual  plan.  It  saves  all 
the  difficulty  of  absurd  definitions,  and  bad  explanations  on 
points,  lines  and  surfaces,  which  are  nothing  but  abstractions. 
...  A  cube  presents  many  of  the  principal  elements  of  geome- 
try; it  at  once  exhibits  points,  straight  lines,  parallel  lines, 
angles,  parallelograms,  etc.  These  cubes  are  divisible  into  vari- 
ous parts.  The  pupil  has  already  been  familiarized  with  such 
divisions  in  numeration,  and  he  now  proceeds  to  a  comparison 
of  their  several  parts,  and  of  the  relation  of  these  parts  to  each 
other.  .  .  .  From  thence  he  advances  to  globes,  which  fur- 
nish him  with  elementary  notions  of  the  circle',  and  of  curves 
generally. 

"Being  tolerably  familiar  with  solids,  he  may  substitute 
planes.  The  transition  may  be  made  very  easy.  Let  the  cube, 
for  instance,  be  cut  into  thin  divisions,  and  placed  on  paper;  he 
will  then  see  as  many  plane  rectangles  as  he  has  divisions ;  so 
with  all  the  others.  Globes  may  be  treated  in  the  same  manner; 
he  will  thus  see  how  surfaces  really  are  generated,  and  be  en- 
abled to  abstract  them  with  facility  in  every  solid. 

"He  has  thus  acquired  the  alphabet  and  reading  of  geometry. 
He  now  proceeds  to  write  it.  The  simplest  operation,  and  there- 
fore the  first,  is  merely  to  place  these  planes  on  a  piece  of  paper, 
and  pass  a  pencil  around  them.  When  this  has  been  frequently 
done,  the  plane  may  be  put  at  a  little  distance,  and  the  child 
required  to  copy  it,  and  so  on." 

Passing  from  this  empirical  geometry  to  the  Euclidean,  as 
set  forth  in  the  average  text-book  on  that  subject,  we  find  that 
the  process  of  demonstration  here  employed,  which  shows  how 
certain  conclusions  necessarily  follow  from  certain  established 
principles,  is  an  exercise  of  the  logical  faculty  that  is  of  peculiar 
and  inestimable  value.  To  that  process  of  reasoning  which  leads 
the  pupil  gradually  and  understandingly  from  the  statement  of 
a  theorem  through  the  various  meshes  and  shades  of  argument 
till  the  "  Q.  E.  D."  is  reached,  must  be  awarded  the  palm  for  the 
best  discipline  of  the  powers  of  deductive  reasoning. 


LESSON   XXIII. 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL. 

No  subject  in  connection  with  child-study  is  more  difficult 
to  treat  than  that  which  is  ordinarily  indicated  by  the  term  voli- 
tion. Neither  can  you  find  a  subject  more  important,  for  the 
true  understanding  of  the  evolution  of  the  will  power  is  neces- 
sary in  order  to  become  at  all  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the 
more  purely  intellectual  and  moral  ideas. 

Activity  is  a  fundamental  property  of  the  conscious  life,  and  if 
any  one  of  the  elements  of  consciousness  — feeling,  knowing,  will- 
ing—is to  be  regarded  as  the  original  form  of  the  conscious  life, 
(the  primordial  element  of  consciousness)  it  must  manifestly  be 
the  will.  The  manifestations  of  the  intellect  and  feeling  acquire 
the  fullest  significance  only  when  they  serve  as  links  in  the  chain 
that  leads  to  action.  Of  course  the  first  arousement  of  the  con- 
scious life  begins  with  sensation.  When  the  first  sensation  has 
been  experienced,  the  psychical  processes  are  set  a-going.  Without 
education  of  the  child's  will  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  improve 
his  mental,  moral,  or  physical  well-being  in  any  respect. 

The  question  we  must  really  answer  in  this  chapter  is,  "  How 
has  this  element  (the  element  of  motor  innervation)  been 
added  to  the  sentient  life  of  the  animal?  "  This  leads  us  to  im- 
press the  fact  that  a  distinction  must  be  made  between  will  in  its 
narrower  and  in  its  wider  application.  In  the  more  restricted  use 
of  the  term,  as  commonly  employed  in  ethics  for  example,  will  is 
made  to  mean  the  power  of  choosing  between  different  possible 
lines  of  action  or  conduct.  In  this  sense  the  will  is  only  the  pro- 
duct of  mental  development  and  in  no  sense  an  original  factor. 
But  if  will  be  understood  in  the  broader  sense,  it  will  be  found  to 
comprehend  all  forms  of  activity,  whether  determined  by  feeling 

L.  P.-22  (337) 


338  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

or  remembered  images,  and  taken  in  this  wide  application,  will 
must  be  regarded  as  the  fullest  expression  of  the  conscious  life, 
even  from  the  very  first  beginnings  of  this  conscious  life.  When 
we  so  conceive  of  the  will,  in  these  two  aspects  or  significations, 
we  can  readily  see  that  the  development  of  will  in  the  person,  pro- 
ceeds from  will  in  the  wider  sense  to  will  in  the  more  restricted 
sense.  This  development  is  not  necessarily  a  steady  progression. 
It  is  more  frequently  sporadic,  and  at  times  very  one-sided, 
turned  hither  and  thither  by  opposing  circumstances ;  but  if  this 
development  attains  its  fullest  fruition  we  find,  as  the  final  out- 
come, the  individual  will  leading  from  these  opposing  impulses  to 
a  deep  inner  harmony  of  the  entire  mental  life. 

To  employ  the  figure  of  Professor  Hoffding,  we  may  then  say 
that,  as  in  Greek  mythology  Eros  was  made  one  of  the  oldest 
and  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  youngest  of  the  gods,  so  in  Psy- 
chology the  will  may,  according  to  the  point  of  view  we  take,  be 
represented  as  the  most  primitive,  or  as  the  most  complex  and 
derivative  of  the  mental  products.  If  by  will  we  mean  only  that 
power  which  manifests  itself  in  action  from  deliberate  choice  alone, 
then  we  must  maintain  that  there  has  already  been  a  rather  ex- 
tensive development  in  the  individual's  mental  life,  for  such  will 
acts  as  here  signified,  cannot  exist  in  the  lowest  forms  of  the 
sentient  consciousness.  To  understand  the  true  nature  of  will,  it 
is  absolutely  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  primitive  germ,  and  to 
trace  it  in  its  path  of  development  from  the  unconscious  to  the 
conscious  —  from  the  most  purely  involuntary  movements  to  those 
that  are  more  refined  and  intricate  as  examples  of  deliberative 
choice. 

Preyer  was  among  the  first  to  seek  to  account  for  the  develop- 
ment of  will  in  the  child,  and  seems  to  regard  it  as  the  natural 
outcome  of  the  desire  the  child  has  for  everything  that  has  once 
occasioned  pleasurable  sensations.  On  a,  priori,  rather  than  on 
experimental  grounds,  Preyer  maintains  that  the  will  is  called 
into  life  by  the  union  of  two  factors,  (a),  an  end  or  pleasure  de- 
sired ;  (b) ,  the  movement  necessary  in  order  to  attain  this  desired 
end.  He  places  most  emphasis  upon  the  first  of  these  two  factors, 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  339 

because  the  movements  can  in  a  large  measure  be  dispensed  with, 
in  the  more  highly  developed  forms  of  the  conscious  life. 

Perez  tells  us:  "The  will  is  born  little  by  little  from  reflex  impulsive 
movements,  which  with  the  progressive  unfolding  of  the  faculties 
of  perception  and  ideation,  and  after  having  been  for  a  long  time 
carried  out  and  modified  in  various  forms  of  activity,  pass  into 
the  domain  of  the  attention  and  become  conscious  or  voluntary 
actions."  Professor  James  regards  the  purely  voluntary  move- 
ments as  secondary  functions  of  our  organism,  while  "reflex,  in- 
stinctive, and  emotional,  are  all  primary  performances."  With 
him,  and  we  think  quite  properly,  too,  the  voluntary  movements 
depend  upon  the  remembered  images  of  former  involuntary  ones. 
To  quote  directly :  "  When  a  given,  particular  movement  having 
once  occurred  in  a  random,  reflex,  or  involuntary  way,  has  left 
an  image  of  itself  in  the  memory,  then  the  movement  can  be  de- 
sired again,  proposed  as  an  end  and  deliberately  willed.  But  it  is 
impossible  to  see  how  it  could  have  been  willed  before.  A  supply 
of  ideas  of  the  various  movements  that  are  possible,  left  in  the 
memory  by  experiences  of  their  involuntary  performance,  is  thus 
the  first  pre-requisite  of  the  voluntary  life." 

It  is  easy  to  see  from  the  above,  that  representative  psycholo- 
gists regard  the  earliest  movements  of  the  child  as  not  voluntary , 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  only  reflex,  instinctive,  and  impulsive. 
In  the  first  movements  of  the  child's  existence  there  is  present 
neither  of  the  two  elements  named  by  Preyer  (see  above).  Cer- 
tain it  is,  there  is  as  yet  no  pleasure  desired  which  serves  as  an 
end  to  be  attained  by  movement.  And,  of  course,  having  no 
clear  idea  of  the  end  sought,  the  young  creature  can  have  no  pos- 
sible notion  of  the  movements  that  are  requisite  to  the  attain- 
ment of  certain  desired  ends. 

The  early  movements  of  the  child  are  no  more  voluntary 
actions  than  is  the  movement  of  the  aspen  leaf,  of  the  brook 
splashing  over  the  rocks  as  it  tumbles  down  the  mountain  side, 
of  the  stone  that  flies  from  the  boy's  sling  shot,  or  of  the  cannon 
ball,  as  it  describes  its  parabola  of  six  or  seven  miles  over  the 
waves  and  across  the  water  when  hurled  from  the  monster  iron- 


340  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

clad  at  sea.  The  individual,  the  personality,  must  first  have  a 
clear,  definite  idea  of  the  movement  and  the  purpose  of  it  before 
voluntary  action  can  possibly  be  initiated .  The  difference  between 
movements,  such  as  we  see  in  the  waving  grain,  the  ebbing  tide, 
the  walking-beam  of  the  monstrous  ferry-boat,  the  ascending 
balloon,  the  falling  meteor,  the  crashing  iceberg,  and  the  impul- 
sive reflex  movements  of  the  child,  on  the  one  hand;  and  on  the 
other  hand  such  movements  as  are  exhibited  by  the  wood-carver 
as  he  cuts  a  design,the  etcher  as  he  traces  a  plate,  the  pilot  as  he 
steers  a  vessel,  the  marine  as  he  "  sights  "  the  cannon,  the  astron- 
omer as  he  turns  his  telescope  upon  the  dimly  lit  star,  the  young 
belle  as  she  learns  to  trip  the  light  fantastic,  the  child  of  five  or  six 
learning  to  weave  mats  at  the  kindergarten,  is  that  the  latter  are 
voluntary  actions  or  movements  plus  consciousness  or  attention. 
Attention,  then,  or  conscious  effort  (and  these  two  are  synono- 
mous  as  you  will  readily  see  by  reference  to  the  chapter  on  atten- 
tion), must  be  added  to  mere  movement  in  order  that  movement 
may  become  transformed  into  voluntary  action.  And  yet  you 
must  not  conceive  of  attention  and  conscious  effort  as  being 
born  long  before  will  comes  into  existence,  for  attention  or  con- 
scious effort  is  only  a  form  or  result  of  will  effort.  Concentrated 
attention  upon  a  desired  end  is  inconceivable  without  presuppos- 
ing an  active  will  force  within  the  person. 

Preyer's  classification  of  the  different  movements  that  take 
place  is  the  one  quite  generally  adopted,  though,  with  Professor 
Tracy,  we  may  say  that  the  adoption  of  Preyer's  classification 
does  not  of  necessity  commit  one  to  his  views  with  respect  to  the 
genesis  of  will. 

First,  we  have  the  impulsive  movements.  By  this  group-name 
it  is  intended  to  signify  that  large  class  of  movements  which  take 
place  without  the  presence  of  any  external  stimulation,  without 
any  sensory  arousement  to  which  the  organism  need  make  re- 
sponse. They  are  of  course  entirely  outside  of  the  domain  of  con- 
scious attention  and  are  therefore  distinctly  will-less  movements, 
being  merely  the  result  of  an  overflow  of  nervous  energy. 

Second,  there  are  those  movements  that  form  so  large  a  por- 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  341 

tion  of  the  early  manifestations  of  activity  on  the  part  of  the 
infant  —  especially  in  the  early  days  of  child  life.  Neither  do  these 
reflex  movements  involve  the  least  degree  of  attention  or  con- 
scious control.  In  fact  they  involve  just  the  opposite.  They, 
too,  are  characterized  by  an  utter  absence  of  the  subject's  power 
of  attention  or  conscious  effort. 

We  have,  in  the  third  place,  what  are  called  the  instinctive 
movements.  These  instinctive  movements  constitute  the  major- 
ity of  the  activities  in  which  animals  engage,  and  are  found  to 
embrace  a  large  number  of  the  movements  which  human  beings 
manifest.  They  are  quite  intimately  associated  with  the  emo- 
tional life  and  are  so  closelj  related  to  habit  that  we  are  apt  to 
consider  all  our  habitual  movements  instinctive.  The  instinc- 
tive movement  is  but  slightly  raised  above  the  reflex  movement, 
and  is  different  from  the  latter  in  that  it  (the  instinctive)  is  char- 
acterized by  an  element  of  consciousness  not  present  in  either  the 
reflex  or  impulsive  movements. 

Finally,  there  is  that  large  class  of  movements  which  are  the 
pure  results  of  deliberative  choice  —  action  in  the  truest  and 
highest  sense — voluntary  action,  which  is  indeed  one  of  the  es- 
sential characteristics  of  personality.  No  such  thing  as  person- 
ality is  conceivable  without  the  power  of  self-direction — this 
action  from  motives  and  ideas  toward  aims  and  ideals.  In  this 
class  of  movements  we  have  as  essential  features  the  desire  of  an 
end  to  be  attained,  concentrated  attention  upon  this  object  or 
end,  the  imaging  of  this  desired  end  before  the  mind,  the  picturing 
of  the  means  to  be  employed  in  order  to  achieve  it,  and  a  forth- 
putting  of  energy  in  order  that  the  desired  end  may  actually  be 
attained.  These  movements  are  really  the  bona  fide  voluntary 
actions,  and  we  may  call  them  deliberative  or  ideational  move- 
ments. We  shall  now  discuss  the  four  classes  of  movements  in 
the  order  named : 

1.  The  Impulsive  Movements. —  Nearly  all  the  movements  that 
characterize  the  child's  pre-natal  life  belong  to  this  class.  They 
constitute  the  larger  number  of  acts  manifested  by  the  new-born 
child,  as  they  do  in  the  new-born  animal.  We  know  that  the 


342  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

simplest  organisms  possess  the  power  of  setting  up  movements 
independently  of  any  external  stimulus.  The  source  of  move- 
ment certainly  lies  within  the  individual  organism  as  an  inher- 
ent capacity.  Now  this  is  by  no  means  the  same  as  saying  that 
such  an  automatic  movement  is  causeless.  These  spontaneous 
or  impulsive  movements  are  brought  about  by  internal  changes, 
the  setting  free  of  accumulated  energy.  If  you  place  the  amoeba 
under  the  microscope  and  examine  it  in  the  most  cursory  way, 
you  will  find  that  this  simplest  of  organisms  manifests  incessant 
activity,  is  incessantly  in  motion.  The  amceba  derives  its  very 
name  from  its  perpetual  modifications  of  movement,  and  move- 
ment, too,  that  is  due  to  in ternal  excitation;  in  other  words,  im- 
pulsive movements.  In  these  spontaneous  movements  the  internal 
changes  set  free  a  certain  amount  of  accumulated  or  potential 
energy,  which  in  turn  depends  upon  the  function  of  nourishment, 
and  which  is,  of  course,  the  fundamental  and  most  primary  of 
the  organic  processes.  These  impulsive  movements,  which  are 
really  produced  by  an  overflow  of  nervous  energy,  are  only  pos- 
sible because  life  itself  is  a  process  of  taking  in  and  using  up  cer- 
tain constituents.  But  a  further  consequence  of  this  is  that  the 
power  of  self -movement  — movement  utterly  independent  of  ex- 
ternal stimulation  — denotes  only  temporary  independence  of 
such  external  conditions.  Permanent  spontaneity  would  be  a 
consumption  of  one's  own  fat,  a  gnawing  at  one's  own  vitals, 
and  under  such  conditions  life  would  endure  for  only  a  brief  space. 

In  the  new-born  child  as  in  the  new-born  animal,  the  impulsive 
movements  embrace  all  those  spontaneous  kickings,  rollings,  lip- 
suckings,  cooings,  jerkings  of  the  head  and  arms,  as  well  as  the 
comical  grimaces,  all  of  which  are  such  a  paramount  feature  of 
the  early  weeks  of  infant  life.  The  little  fists  are  tightly  clenched, 
the  arms  are  continually  performing  wild  gyrations,  the  hands 
are  moved  toward  and  from  the  face,  toward  and  from  each 
other,  without  being  prompted  by  any  definite  purpose ;  in  fact, 
nearly  every  muscle  of  the  body  is  called  into  activity  without 
the  presence  of  any  sort  of  external  stimulus. 

Most  of  the  impulsive  movements,  indeed  nearly  all  of  them, 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  343 

disappear  by  the  end  of  the  child's  second  year,  though  some  of 
them,  like  yawning  or  gaping,  persist  through  life.  Seemingly 
many  of  the  impulsive  movements  are  unexpected  by  the  child 
itself.  He  cannot  understand  their  purport  and  his  surprise  at 
some  of  them  is  quite  marked  and  notable.  The  moving  of  the 
lips,  even  the  first  smile,  belongs  to  this  class  of  movements,  as  do 
those  movements  of  the  hands  that  accompany  swallowing  and 
also  the  rolling  of  the  eyes  in  sucking. 

While  these  impulsive  movements  in  themselves  are  not  voli- 
tional actions  in  the  strict  sense,  they  show  that  the  organism  is 
a  little  world  in  itself  with  the  power  of  creating  motions  from 
within,  and  that  it  does  not  need  to  wait  for  external  incentives 
to  set  it  into  activity.  These  impulsive  movements  are  indeed 
the  raw  material  which  in  the  progressively  unfolding  will  are  so 
wrought  upon  by  the  child  in  its  incessant  activity  that  they  are 
finally  moulded  and  transformed,  with  the  help  of  the  other  pow- 
ers of  mind,  into  the  highest  type  of  deliberative  actions. 

Reflex  Movements.— Close  upon  the  heels  of  the  spontaneity 
which  is  manifested  in  the  earliest  stages  of  existence  as  a  natural 
efflux  of  a  superabundance  of  life,  close  upon  these  earliest  self- 
movements  in  the  path  of  development  of  the  organism,  irritabil- 
ity manifests  itself.  By  irritability  is  meant  the  power  of  re- 
sponding to  an  external  stimulus.  By  reflex  movements,  then, 
we  mean  those  that  occur  as  a  response-  on  the  part  of  the  ner- 
vous system  to  external  stimulation,  without  any  participation 
of  self-consciousness  or  the  presence  of  any  deliberation  or  choice. 
They  never  enter  into  consciousness  during  their  performance, 
though  sometimes  we  clearly  remember  them  after  they  have  been 
performed.  These  reflex  movements  are  found  in  the  adult  as 
well  as  in  the  child;  for  example,  the  quick  start  on  hearing  the 
sudden  report  of  a  gun  discharged  near  you,  the  quick  with- 
drawal of  the  hand  when  one  is  picking  berries  and  suddenly  ob- 
serves a  snake  coiled  up  in  close  proximity,  or  the  startled  jump 
made  by  the  boy  as  he  gets  into  bed  and  his  feet  come  in  contact 
with  a  cold,  clammy  banana  skin  surreptitiously  placed  there  by 
a  mischievous  mate. 


344  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

You  see,  then,  that  while  reflex  movements  are  not  brought 
about  immediately  or  directly  by  the  internal  state,  but  by 
a  stimulus  from  the  external  world,  they  are  nevertheless 
purely  mechanical  —  they  are  most  certainly  not  the  result 
of  conscious  deliberation.  While  certain  elementary  feelings 
or  sensations  may  be  present,  they  are  not  made  the  subject 
of  conscious  elaboration  into  a  desired  end  or  object,  toward  the 
acquirement  of  which  the  activities  ought  to  be  directed.  Hoff- 
ding  puts  it  succinctly  when  he  says:  "Reflex  movement  is,  in- 
deed, characteristic  of  the  direct  transition  from  excitation  to 
movement.  Reflex  effect  is  just  as  voluntary  as  spontaneous 
movement." 

Any  simple  reflex  movement  is  one  that  is  set  up  by  a  simple 
excitation  (external).  If,  however,  several  excitations  occur  to- 
gether, the  effect  depends  upon  whether  the  movements  they  each 
tend  to  bring  about,  harmonize  or  not.  Thus  a  frog,  minus  a 
cerebrum,  will  croak  if  its  back  be  gently  stroked;  but  if  at  the 
same  time  his  hind  leg  is  powerfully  stimulated,  the  frog  will  not 
croak.  It  might  be  well  to  interpolate  the  remark  that  the  most 
effective  inhibitions  to  reflex  movements  are  supplied  by  the  cere- 
bral hemispheres.  In  the  first  years  of  life,  while  the  cerebrum  is 
as  yet  undeveloped,  no  reflex  movements  are  inhibited. 

Reflex  movements  are  of  the  greatest  importance  and  far- 
reaching  significance  in  will  development,  for  upon  them  the 
strictly  voluntary  movements  are  immediately  dependent.  In  the 
processes  of  inhibition  mentioned  above,  the  will  is  greatly  bur- 
aened  in  its  course  of  development,  for  in  the  more  refined  form 
of  this  inhibition,  the  chief  function  is  the  voluntary  and  deliberate 
repression  of  the  reflex  movements.  Among  the  earliest  of  the 
reflex  movements  to  manifest  themselves,  are  those  concerned 
with  the  respiratory  functions.  The  first  cry  the  child  makes  as 
the  air  passes  into  its  lungs,  is  certainly  of  this  character,  for 
brainless  children  make  themselves  heard  in  the  first  moments  of 
life,  just  as  well  as  do  normal  children.  In  many  new-born  chil- 
dren, especially  if  much  light  be  admitted  to  the  room,  sneezing 
takes  the  place  of  crying,  and  is  a  pure  reflex  action,  and  as  such 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  345 

it  continues  through  life.  We  need  only  to  allude  to  certain  other 
of  the  respiratory  reflexes  —  such  as  coughing,  choking,  hiccough- 
ing, and  the  like,  all  of  which  are  to  be  observed  from  the  very 
first  days  of  infant  life. 

It  is  claimed  that  starting  from  a  sudden  noise  or  jar  is  not 
present  at  the  very  first;  but  I  have  observed  two  very  good 
instances  which  plainly  show  that  it  may  be  present.  My  own 
little  girl,  when  but  two  hours  old,  was  observed  by  me  to  start 
suddenly  when  I  dropped  the  sliding  window-screen  so  as  to 
make  a  sudden  noise.  I  made  no  less  than  three  trials,  each  of 
which  was  successful  in  provoking  the  reflex  movement  — a  sud- 
den start. 

The  reflex  movements  of  the  limbs  are  quite  numerous  and 
manifest  themselves  rather  early.  On  the  seventh  day  Darwin 
tickled  the  sole  of  his  child's  foot  with  a  piece  of  paper;  the  foot 
was  jerked  away  and  the  toes  curled  up. 

3.  The  Instinctive  Movements.— in.  so  far  as  a  line  can  be 
drawn  between  the  reflex  movements  and  the  instinctive  move- 
ments, it  must  be  by  saying  that  the  latter  are  more  com- 
plex, more  active  and  more  conscious  than  the  former.  Instead 
of  the  momentary  nervous  discharge  so  plainly  manifest  in  re- 
flex, as  well  as  the  impulsive  movements,  there  is  a  direction  of 
the  activities  to  a  more  or  less  distant  end.  Stimulus  is  required 
in  order  to  set  an  instinct  to  work,  but  the  kind  of  action  is 
determined  far  more  by  the  motor  tendencies  implanted  and 
habits  inculcated  in  the  individual  than  by  the  nature  of  the 
stimulus.  The  stimulus  serves  only  to  open  the  valve  that  the 
m  ot  or  tendencies  may  escape.  The  stimulus  « '  presses  the  button , ' ' 
the  reacting  organism  "  does  the  rest." 

You  can  also  see  that  they  differ  from  impulsive  movements  in 
that  they  do  not  take  place  in  the  absence  of  appropriate 
external  stimuli.  They  also  differ  from  impulsive  movements 
in  that  they  have  an  end  or  purpose,  though,  as  Tracy  remarks, 
this  end  may  not  be  known  at  the  time  of  the  performance.  They 
are  also  colored  by  certain  emotional  conditions.  Thus , "  a  child 
in  a  sorrowful  frame  of  mind  does  not  laugh  when  his  toes  are 


346  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  7JV  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tickled."  The  rise  of  right  or  left  handedness  belongs  to  this 
stage  of  instinctive  movements.  Professor  Baldwin's  experi- 
ments along  this  line  are  very  interesting.  He  found : 

1st.  No  trace  of  preference  for  either  hand  manifested,  so 
long  as  no  violent  muscular  exertions  were  made.  In  more 
than  2,000  experiments  one  hand  was  preferred  as  often  as  the 
other. 

2d.  From  the  sixth  to  the  tenth  month,  the  tendency  to  use 
both  hands  together  was  about  twice  as  great  as  the  tendency  to 
use  either  hand  alone.  Out  of  2,187  experiments,  right  hand  was 
used  alone  585  times;  left  hand,  568  times;  both  hands  to- 
gether, 1,034  times. 

3d.  Bight-handed  ness  developed  under  a  pressure  of  muscular 
effort.  Preference  for  the  right  hand  manifested  itself  in  reach- 
ing where  violent  effort  was  required,  in  the  eighth  month.  Ex- 
periments show  that  in  such  violent  effort,  the  right  hand  was 
preferred  74  times,  the  left  5  times,  and  both  hands  but  once. 
Under  the  stimulus  of  bright  colors,  the  right  hand  was  em  ployed 
84  times  and  the  left  hand  but  twice. 

The  instinctive  mouth  movements  are  sucking,  biting,  chew- 
ing, and  the  like.  According  to  Preyer,  a  child  sucks,  bites,  smacks 
its  lips,  chews  and  licks  just  as  instinctively  as  a  chicken  picks  up 
corn  and  insects.  The  same  holds  true,  in  a  great  measure,  of 
sitting,  standing,  creeping,  walking  and  running. 

"  It  is  an  important  epoch  in  a  child's  life  when  he  succeeds  in 
standing  alone.  Whole  sets  of  muscles,  heretofore  scarcely  used, 
are  now  brought  into  activity,  and  his  progress  is,  from  this 
time  on,  more  all-sided  and  symmetrical.  Hitherto  his  locomo- 
tion has  been  only  in  the  form  of  creeping  (which  is  performed  in 
a  great  variety  of  ways,  some  children  paddling  straight  ahead 
on  all-fours,  like  little  quadrupeds,  some  hitching  along  in  an 
indescribable  manner  on  their  haunches,  and  some  going  back- 
wards, crab-fashion) ;  but  for  the  child  who  has  learned  to  stand 
alone,  the  transition  to  walking  is,  in  a  very  literal  sense,  "only 
a  step."  The  first  conscious  steps  are  taken  very  timidly,  and 
with  an  evident  fear  of  falling.  But  frequently  the  first  steps  are 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  347 

taken  unconsciously.  Sometimes  a  child  who  has  learned  to  walk, 
partially  or  wholly,  reverts  for  a  season  to  creeping,  for  no  ap- 
parent reason.  Children  who  have  older  brothers  or  sisters  are 
likely  to  walk  at  an  earlier  age  than  others,  on  account  of  the 
example  and  assistance  of  these  older  ones.  At  first  the  feet  are 
placed  disproportionately  wide  apart,  giving  rise  to  a  curious 
waddling  motion;  while  sometimes  a  child  runs  instead  of  walk- 
ing, and  staggers,  with  the  body  inclined  forward,  and  the  hands 
stretched  out  as  though  he  were  afraid  of  falling,  the  feet,  too, 
being  lifted  higher  than  is  necessary.  Many  children  seem  more 
amiable  after  they  have  learned  to  walk,  doubtless  on  account  of 
their  newly  acquired  ability,  which  not  only  occupies  their  atten- 
tion, but  enables  them  to  go  more  readily  to  the  objects  of  their 
desire."* 

4th.  Ideational  Movements.— We  can  best  study  the  genesis 
of  ideational  movements  when  we  note  how  the  will  gradually 
brings  the  bodily  movements  under  its  control.  This  is  indeed 
the  first  important  accomplishment  in  the  course  of  the  will's 
training,  and  is  so  important  that  motor-ideas  must  be  consid- 
ered as  the  basis  of  all  conscious  volition.  To  all  external  ap- 
pearances action  is  directed  from  within  outward,  but  even  this 
presupposes  an  inner  activity  —  a  determining  of  the  ideas  by  the 
thought  of  an  end  to  be  attained.  The  thought  of  an  end  is  the 
most  important  element;  indeed,  it  is  the  distinguishing  charac- 
teristic of  all  ideational  movements.  Passing  over  theimpulsive, 
reflex  and  instinctive  movements  in  turn,  we  find  that  ideational 
movements  are  different  from  each  and  all  of  these  in  that  they 
[ideational]  involve  the  previous  portrayal  or  re-presentation  to 
the  mind  of  an  end  sought,  an  object  to  be  acquired,  or  an  aim  to 
be  realized.  It  is  only  to  such  movements  as  these  that  the  term 
''voluntary  actions"  can  be  applied.  All  the  other  classes  are 
only  movements,  in  just  the  same  sense  that  movements  among 
physical  phenomena  are  movements. 

In  the  higher  forms  of  will  activity,  then,  we  have  the  presence 
of  motor-ideas  that  are  determined  by  the  thought  of  an  end  or 

*  "  The  Psychology  of  Childhood  "  by  Dr.  Frederick  Tracy,  p.  56. 


348  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

desired  object.  Certain  conditions  are  essential  in  order  that  we 
may  have  these  motor-ideas.  The  first  condition  is  that  move- 
ments must  be  made  which  are  felt.  This  shows  that  ideational 
movements  exist  only  by  virtue  of  the  spontaneous,  reflex  and 
instinctive  activities. 

Impulsive  and  reflex  movements  constitute  the  material  which 
serves  as  the  basis  of  our  motor-ideas. 

In  the  most  elementary  and  primitive  manifestations  of  will, 
the  distinction  between  sensation  and  motor  impulses  does  not 
appear  as  yet.  The  reflexes  as  well  as  the  instinctive  movements 
are  characterized  by  the  fact  that  the  external  excitation — the 
stimulus  —  immediately  evokes  a  movement ;  a  sensation  may  in- 
deed be  felt,  and  also  a  feeling  of  pleasure  or  pain,  together  with 
a  certain  restlessness,  if  constraint  be  applied ;  but  memory,  and 
of  course  motor-memories,  play  no  part.  "A  motor  impulse 
presupposes  the  memory  of  executed  movement.'"  This  memory 
may  consist  in  remembering  the  appearance  of  the  movement,  or 
in  remembering  the  previous  motor  sensation  itself.  The  tetter 
is  what  we  really  mean  by  a  "  motor-idea."  If  the  previous  move- 
ment has  had  unfavorable,  painful  consequences,  the  memory 
image  of  this  movement  will,  of  course,  be  associated  with  pain, 
which  will  tend  to  prevent  the  repetition  of  the  movement  when 
the  occasion  again  presents  itself  in  consciousness.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  will  always  be  a  tendency  toward  the  repetition  of 
movements  that,  when  previously  executed,  evoked  certain  pleas- 
urable sensations,  and  which  pleasurable  sensations  have  been 
remembered  and  re-presented  in  consciousness. 

That  it  is  this  precedence  of  the  motor  idea  which  causes  any 
movement  to  assume  the  true  voluntary  character,  was  made 
clear  by  Professor  Miinsterberg  in  his  admirable  little  treatise, 
"Die  Willenshandlung."  Indeed,  Miinsterberg  was  the  first  to 
champion  this  view  in  any  thorough-going  and  consistent  way. 
One  of  the  most  terse  of  his  sentences  reads :  "  We  will  execute  a 
certain  motion,  really  signifies  that  we  are  conscious  of  the  idea 
of  the  motion,  or  of  the  motor  idea." 

Professor  Preyer  divides   ideational   movements  into  three 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  349 

classes:  (1)  imitative  movements;  (2)  expressive  movements; 
(3)  deliberate  actions. 

(1 ) .  Imitati  ve  Mo  vements.  —  Under  this  category  are  subsumed 
all  those  lower  voluntary  activities  in  which  the  child  depends 
upon  an  observed  model  or  pattern,  and  which  would  never  be 
attempted  by  the  child  unless  first  observed  in  some  one  else. 
This  imitative  propensity  begins  as  early  as  the  third  or  fourth 
month,  in  imitation  of  sounds,  the  pouting  of  the  lips,  etc. 
Preyer  tells  us  of  his  child  that  "the  first  attempt  at  imitation 
occurred  in  the  fifteenth  week,  the  child  making  an  attempt  to 
purse  his  lips  when  one  did  it  close  in  front  of  him,  while  in  the 
seventeenth  week  the  protruding  of  the  tip  of  the  tongue  was 
perfectly  imitated  once  when  done  before  the  child's  face,  and  the 
child  smiled  at  this  strange  movement,  which  seemed  to  please 
him."  We  quote  again  from  Professor  Tracy,  who  by  the  way, 
in  his  published  thesis  —  " The  Psychology  of  Childhood"  —  has 
given  us  the  best  epitome  of  the  literature  on  the  subject: 

"  There  is  no  point  on  which  I  find  so  much  uniformity  as  this, 
that  imitation  begins  during  the  second  half  of  the  first  year. 
This  is  true  of  almost  all  children  without  exception,  so  far  as  I 
know,  and  extends  not  only  to  movements  proper,  but  also  to 
vocal  imitation,  as  we  shall  see.  A  boy  of  seven  months  tried 
hard  to  say  simple  monosyllables  after  his  mother.  Another  is 
reported  to  have  accomplished  his  first  unmistakable  imitations 
when  seven  months  old,  in  movements  of  the  head  and  lips, 
laughing,  and  the  like.  Crying  was  imitated  in  the  ninth  month, 
and  in  the  tenth,  imitation  of  all  sorts  was  quite  correctly  exe- 
cuted, though  even  at  the  end  of  the  first  year  new  movements, 
and  those  requiring  complex  coordination,  often  failed.  A  child 
of  eight  and  a  half  months,  having  seen  his  mother  poke  the  fire, 
afterwards  crept  to  the  hearth,  seized  the  poker,  thrust  it  into 
the  ash-pan,  and  poked  it  back  and  forth  with  great  glee,  chuckling 
to  himself.  Another  child  in  his  tenth  month,  imitated  whistling, 
and  later,  the  motions  accompanying  the  familiar  'pat-a-cake,' 
etc.  In  his  eleventh  month  he  used  to  hold  up  the  newspaper 
and  mumble  in  imitation  of  reading.  Another  boy,  in  his  elev- 


350  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

enth  month,  used  to  cough  and  sniff  like  his  grandfather,  and 
amused  himself  by  grunting,  crowing,  gobbling  and  barking  in 
imitation  of  the  domestic  animals  and  birds.  A  little  girl  of  this 
age  used  to  reproduce  with  her  doll  some  of  her  own  experiences, 
such  as  giving  it  a  bath,  punishing  it,  kissing  it,  and  singing  it  to 
sleep.  One  fine  morning  in  May,  I  took  the  little  boy,  B.,  for  a 
walk  through  a  beautiful  avenue,  where  the  trees  on  each  side 
met  overhead  in  a  mass  of  foliage.  These  trees  were  full  of  birds, 
busy  with  their  nest-building,  and  full  of  song.  The  little  fellow 
was  fairly  enchanted.  He  could  not  go  on.  Every  few  steps  he 
would  stop  (at  the  same  time  pulling  at  my  hand  to  make  me 
stop,  too),  and  looking  up  into  the  trees,  with  his  head  turned 
on  one  side,  would  give  back  the  bird-song,  in  a  series  of  warbling, 
trilling  notes  of  indescribable  sweetness.  I  very  much  doubt 
whether  any  adult  voice,  however  trained,  or  any  musical  instru- 
ment, however  complicated,  could  produce  those  wonderful  in- 
flections. The  same  boy,  a  little  later,  used  to  imitate  with  his 
voice  the  boys  whistling  in  the  street,  giving  the  right  pitch.  An- 
other boy,  at  thirteen  months,  brushes  his  hair,  tries  to  put  on 
his  shoes  and  stockings,  and  many  other  similar  things.  Indeed 
the  whole  life  of  the  child  of  this  age  is  full  of  imitation.  Going 
out  with  the  girl,  F.,  I  observed  that  she  did  almost  everything  I 
did;  I  brushed  some  dust  from  my  coat  and  she  immediately 
'brushed'  her  dress  in  like  manner.  It  is  in  fact  difficult  fully 
to  realize  how  the  child  of  this  age  is  watching  our  every  move- 
ment, and  learning  thereby.  Not  only  parents  and  teachers,  but 
every  one  who  comes  in  contact  with  the  child,  even  casually  and 
occasionally,  contributes  his  share,  whether  he  will  or  not,  in  the 
child's  education.  The  moral  of  this  is  too  obvious  to  require 
repetition." 

The  child's  tendency  to  imitate  those  about  him  is  a  very  im- 
portant factor  in  furthering  the  development  of  will.  From  a 
very  early  period  it  is  right  in  line  with  the  force  of  the  child's 
personal  desires,  thus  tending  greatly  to  a  shortening  of  the  pro- 
cess of  acquisition  in  the  case  of  useful  movements  which  he 
would  otherwise  perform.  Thus  a  child,  thrown  into  company 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  351 

with  othei-  children  who  are  just  able  to  walk,  learns  to  walk 
much  more  quickly  than  a  child  cut  off  from  the  example  of 
others. 

Children  vary  greatly  in  the  strength  of  the  impulse  to  per- 
form Imitative  movements.  Much  depends  upon  bodily  health, 
inherited  vigor,  hygienic  conditions,  nourishment  and  the  like. 
An  energetic  child,  one  with  a  full  head  of  steam,  is  much  more 
likely  to  pick  up  the  movements  of  others  and  imitate  them, 
than  a  child  that  is  poorly  nourished,  feeble  and  lethargic. 
Much  depends  upon  the  temperament— a  child  of  an  independ- 
ent, self-assertive  turn  of  mind  will  do  little  in  the  line  of  imitat- 
ing others'  movements,  for  such  a  child  prefers  his  own  mode  of 
activity. 

But  it  must  be  remembered  that  imitation  is  more  than  mere 
reproduction.  The  chief  value  of  imitation  lies  in  the  fact  that 
it  necessitates  a  sort  of  unconscious  selection  and  synthesis  of 
former  movements.  Thus,  the  child  could  not  learn  to  wave  its 
hand  in  obedient  response  to  a  wave  of  the  hand  by  the  mother, 
if  he  had  not  already  acquired  a  certain  stock  of  experiences  in 
waving  the  hand  in  other  ways— in  the  impulsive  and  reflex 
movements.  This  higher  form  of  constructive  imitation  pre- 
supposes, of  necessity,  a  certain  fund  of  remembered  motor 
experiences. 

2.  Expressive  Movements.— The  most  important  group  of  the 
expressive  movements  is  that  which  comprehends  the  movements 
involved  in  speech ;  but  the  expressive  movements  of  the  face  and 
dermal  appendages  must  also  be  included — blushing,  crying, 
bristling  of  the  hair,  laughing.  Likewise  certain  movements  of 
the  head  and  a  large  number  of  gestures  fall  under  the  same  rubric 
— "  expressive  movements." 

The  first  cry  or  the  first  smile  is  in  all  probability  the  result  of 
an  external  stimulus,  and  the  movement  itself  a  reflex  one.  But 
a  movement  that  is  at  first  reflex  may  become  the  intentional  ex- 
pression of  the  mental  states.  Certain  it  is  that  crying,  gestur- 
ing, and  the  like,  later  fall  under  the  control  of  the  will,  and 
become  purposive  expressions  of  the  conscious  life. 


352  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

The  first  so-called  smile  has  been  observed  in  children  less  than 
two  weeks  old,  but  it  can,  in  such  cases,  be  regarded  as  only  an 
impulsive  movement  — the  outcropping  of  a  superabundance  of 
pleasurable  feeling.  Preyer  found  that  a  smile  could  be  evoked 
very  early  by  tickling  the  sole  of  the  infant's  foot.  In  the  case  of 
his  own  child  he  observed  such  a  smile  on  the  sixteenth  day  after 
birth,  and  "  real  smiles  from  the  twenty-sixth  day  on;  in  the  eighth 
week  enjoyment  of  music  was  manifested  by  laughing  and  smiling, 
accompanied  by  lively  movements  of  the  limbs  and  a  bright, 
gleaming  expression  of  the  eyes.  The  imitative  laugh  began 
about  the  ninth  month  after  birth."  Mrs.  Talbot's  account  of 
the  genesis  and  development  of  the  smile  is  very  interesting  in 
this  connection : 

"The  smile  begins  when  the  infant  first  begins  to  be  conscious 
of  outside  things;  attention  gradually  becomes  closer  and  more 
fixed;  the  smile  at  this  stage  is  a  mere  stare,  vacant  at  first,  but 
growing  steadily  more  intelligent  and  wondering  in  its  appear- 
ance. About  the  third  week  this  begins  to  relax  very  slightly 
into  the  appearance  of  pleasure.  At  this  point  there  comes  more 
and  more  of  a  glow  on  the  face — a  beaming — then  in  a  day  or 
two  a  very  slight  relaxation  of  the  muscles,  increasing  every  day. 
This  dawning  smile  is  often  very  beautiful,  but  it  is  not  yet  a 
smile.  It  is  almost  a  smile,  and  I  am  confident  that  no  one  will 
ever  know  the  exact  day  when  the  baby  fairly  and  intelligently 
for  the  first  time  smiles." 

The  kiss  is  an  expressive  action,  not  at  all  hereditary,  but  ac- 
quired and  embodying  an  imitative  element.  "The  child  sel- 
dom understands  its  meaning  or  gives  it  spontaneously  till  in 
the  second  year." 

Preyer  tells  us  that  there  are  no  less  than  three  sorts  of  pout- 
ing, and  these  differ  from  each  other  according  to  the  specific 
cause.  The  first  variety  is  merely  a  protrusion  of  the  lips,  which 
can  be  seen  in  the  very  earliest  hours  of  life,  with  some  children. 
It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  it  is  purely  impulsive.  The 
second  kind  embraces  what  is  commonly  known  as  the  pursing  of 
the  lips,  pinching  them  as  we  do  in  later  adult  life  during 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  853 

strained  attention.  The  third  is  the  pout  of  sullenness,  which  de- 
velops much  later  than  the  others,  and  cannot  be  said  to  be 
due  to  imitation,  for  it  frequently  occurs  where  no  opportunity 
for  imitation  is  afforded. 

Shaking  the  head  in  dissent  and  nodding  it  in  approval  arise 
from  different  sources.  The  latter  is  acquired,  but  the  first  is  the 
result  of  a  defensive  movement  (due  to  certain  hereditary  ten- 
dencies), made  frequently  as  early  as  the  second  week,  when  one 
attempts  to  put  food  or  any  object  into  the  infant's  mouth  when 
it  is  not  hungry.  We  are  told  of  some  instances  of  this  side  to 
side  movement  of  the  head,  in  children  not  more  than  one  week 
old. 

But  we  must  pass  to  the  remaining  group  ol  ideational 
movements. 

3.  Deliberative  Movements. — In  order  to  perform  deliberative 
or  voluntary  movements  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term  it  is  cer- 
tainly necessary  that  one  first  have  an  extensive  experience  with 
movements  of  the  involuntary  sort.  A  voluntary  movement  is 
one  which  is  pictured  beforehand  in  the  imagination.  No  volun- 
tary act  is  possible  without  a  motor-idea,  and  this  motor-idea  is 
supplied  by  either  the  memory  or  the  reproductive  imagination  in 
the  form  of  re-presented  movement.  Many  movements  that  are 
at  first  performed  in  voluntarily  are  afterwards  performed  deliber- 
ately, i.  e.,  from  a  desire  to  attain  a  certain  end  or  object  present 
in  the  imagination  or  the  re-presentative  consciousness.  When 
desire,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  comes  into  being, a  certain 
amount  of  attention  is  bestowed  upon  the  object  sought,  and 
the  motor-ideas  are  re-presented  and  kept  in  mind,  we  have  what 
can  correctly  be  designated  deliberative  or  voluntary  action  in 
the  true  sense.  In  this  truly  voluntary  action,  then,  these  three 
things  are  necessarily  presupposed— desire,  attention  and  motor 
ideas.  By  means  of  several  varieties  of  involuntary  movement 
the  child  gains  some  experience  with  his  powers,  thereby  learn- 
ing the  results  of  bringing  these  powers  into  activity,  and  volun- 
tary movement  is  thus  really  the  outgrowth  of  trial  and  experi- 
ence. Preyer  found  no  movement  in  the  first  three  months, 

L.  P.— 23 


354  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

which  he  could  regard  with  certainty  as  a  strictly  deliberative 
movement. 

This  brief  survey  of  the  various  kinds  of  will  acts  shows  again 
the  importance  of  the  distinction  between  voluntary  and  non- 
voluntary  attention,  made  in  a  previous  chapter.  While  non- 
voluntary  attention  has  the  character  of  an  instinct,  voluntary 
attention  makes  its  appearance  as  a  sort  of  impulse ;  being  sub- 
sequently guided  by  an  idea,  of  what  it  desires  to  perceive,  it 
becomes  capable  of  being  developed  "into  clearly-conscious. 
choosing,  will"  The  endeavor  on  the  part  of  the  voluntary 
attention  to  retain  and  call  forth  certain  memory-images  and 
motor-ideas  is  characterized  by  a  feeling  of  effort. 

In  this  rich  fund  of  spontaneous,  reflex  and  instinctive  move- 
ments, nature  has  really  paved  the  way  for  our  highest  types  of 
deliberative  volition— volition  in  the  truest  and  best  sense.  But 
at  the  same  time,  nature  in  so  doing  gives  us  too  much  and  too 
little.  These  strong,  impulsive  movements,  which  are  pri- 
mordial, must  be  guided  into  a  definite  direction  and  modified 
both  in  degree  and  kind  before  they  can  serve  the  purpose  of 
self-conscious  personality.  Thus,  nearly  every  movement  of  the 
body  is  at  first  produced  impulsively,  involuntarily  and  at  ran- 
dom ;  but  afterwards  they  are  either  retained  and  repeated,  or  in- 
hibited arid  suppressed.  At  first  none  of  the  reflex  or  impulsive 
movements  are  inhibited,  but  education  represses  them  more  and 
more.  The  little  child  whose  higher  brain  centers,  whose  cere- 
bral hemispheres,  have  as  yet  no  active  influence,  lacks  the  con- 
trolling apparatus  which  is  the  condition  of  all  self-restraint. 
The  extent  to  which  practice  and  accommodation  may  go,  is 
exhibited  in  the  case  of  the  Siamese  twins,  whose  bodies  had 
grown  into  one  and  who  had  brought  their  movements  into  such 
harmony  that,  as  necessity  arose,  and  without  any  preconcerted 
signal,  they  could  walk,  run  and  jump  just  as  though  they  had 
been  one  single  individual. 

This  process  of  inhibition,  by  means  of  which  the  will  obtains 
such  power  over  the  body ,  goes  on  much  more  slowly  in  man  than 
in  animals.  The  child  needs  two  years  for  the  same  course  of 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  WILL.  355 

education  that  requires  the  kitten  but  a  month  to  go  through. 
This  ability  to  inhibit  movements  is  certainly  one  of  the  most 
certain  criteria  of  the  presence  of  will.  To  keep  from  moving  is  cer- 
tainly more  difficult  than  to  move,  especially  in  a  being  so  rest- 
less as  a  child  naturally  is.  To  will  is  to  bind  or  commit  ourselves 
to  something  definite.  This  can  be  done  either  in  the  way  of  in- 
hibiting certain  tendencies  to  move,  or  in  deciding  upon  a  certain 
definite  kind  of  movement. 

The  course  of  development  that  follows  the  will  in  its  evolu- 
tion is  well  set  forth  in  the  following  words  of  Professor  Hoffding 
of  the  University  of  Copenhagen : 

"Nature  gives  us  from  the  first  an  impetus,  for  we  find  our- 
selves already  active  at  the  birth  of  consciousness.  Conscious- 
ness only  gradually  acquires  an  influence  over  the  activities 
(whether  inward  or  outward),  and  this  influence  never  becomes 
complete.  The  spontaneous  impulse  to  movement,  the  reflex 
movements,  and  the  half-conscious  movements  accompanied  by 
an  obscure  feeling,  preserve  a  certain  independence,  even  after 
conscious  thought  has  nominally  taken  the  direction  of  affairs. 
Similarly  with  involuntary  series  of  ideas  and  with  emotions. 
The  unconscious  and  the  involuntary  play  a  part,  to  an  extent 
varying  in  individual  cases,  in  all  conscious  volition,  and  some- 
times break  into  open  revolt.  .  .  .  These  unconscious  tenden- 
cies to  activity  are  not  noticed  so  long  as  they  bend  in  the  same 
direction  as  the  conscious  thoughts  and  feelings.  Their  force 
merges  with  that  of  the  conscious  motives,  which  latter  receive 
the  honor  or  shame  of  the  whole  action.  We  feel  ourselves  free 
and  unchecked  in  our  activity.  It  is  only  when  these  unconscious 
tendencies  work  against  the  end  of  conscious  endeavor,  that 
attention  is  called  to  the  fact  of  a  something  in  us,  of  which  we 
are  never,  or  at  any  rate,  not  at  the  moment,  master.  This  sense 
of  inner  division,  of  a  contradiction,  is  at  the  same  time  a  feeling 
of  constraint.  Such  a  feeling  of  constraint  often  denotes  a  tran- 
sition to  a  higher  stage  in  the  life  of  the  will.  It  is  the  condition 
that  makes  it  possible  for  us  to  pronounce  judgment  upon  our 
earlier  volition;  for  while  our  will  works  on  with  undivided  en- 


356  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ergy,  there  is  no  room  for  an  estimation  or  a  judgment,  but  we 
go  straight  ahead.  Here  is  seen  the  great  importance  of  the 
interval  already  mentioned.  It  may  conduce  to  a  stoppage, 
even  to  a  hesitation  and  a  discord  in  the  mind,  but  it  is  necessary 
to  higher  development.  It  may  also  lead  to  the  absolute  con- 
demnation and  rejection  of  the  previous  bent  of  the  will." 

The  connection  of  one  phase  of  mental  development  with  all 
the  others  is  well  illustrated  in  the  close  dependence  of  intellectual 
growth  upon  the  exercise  of  the  will,  especially  in  voluntary  at- 
tention. We  saw  in  Chapter  XVIII,  that,  though  chiefly  related 
to  the  volitional  side  of  mind,  attention  is  the  primary  condition 
of  all  intellectual  operations.  All  the  higher  forms  of  mental 
activity  show  plainly  the  necessity  of  the  exercise  of  the  will  in  the 
way  of  concentration.  This  makes  intellectual  growth  the  direct 
outcome  of  will-development :  for  it  is  voluntary  concentration 
that  makes  possible  the  highest  and  most  worthy  activity  of  all 
the  mental  processes. 


LESSON  XXIV. 

TIME  RELATIONS  OF  MENTAL  PHENOMENA. 

No  sketch  of  Psychology  would  be  at  all  complete  if  the  discus- 
sion of  the  duration  of  our  various  mental  acts  be  omitted.  The 
measurement  of  the  time  rate  of  the  various  mental  processes 
was,  historically,  almost  the  very  first  of  the  attempts  made  by 
the  experimental  psychologist  to  put  the  science  upon  an  exact 
basis.  Certain  it  is  that  "  Psychometry  "  has  interested  and  oc- 
cupied more  students  than  any  other  field  of  investigation  in 
modern  Psychology.  Psychometry  is  the  general  term  used  to 
designate  that  department  of  research,  which  has  for  its  object 
the  measurement  of  the  duration  of  the  mental  processes. 

From  the  earliest  times  the  question  of  the  rapidity  of  thought 
has  been  discussed.  We  have  always  been  conscious  of  thinking, 
sometimes  faster  and  sometimes  more  slowly.  This  is  a  matter 
of  universal  consciousness.  In  times  of  excitement  and  mental 
activity,  our  ideas  come  quicker  than  a  flash.  We  know  that  the 
rapidity  of  thought  is  prodigious  in  dreams— a  whole  "  dream- 
plot"  unfolding  itself  in  a  few  seconds,  which,  in  ordinary  wakeful 
consciousness,  would  take  hours  to  consummate.  In  a  former 
chapter  we  discussed  the  influence  of  drugs  upon  the  flow  of  our 
ideas,  and  found  a  good  illustration  in  the  account  of  Thomas 
De  Quincey,  who,  when  he  increased  the  usual  dose  of  opium,  be- 
lieved ''that  in  one  night  he  had  lived  a  thousand  years,  or  indeed 
a  length  of  time  that  exceeded  all  human  experience."  We  know, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  thought  in  the  half-witted,  stupid  person 
is  sluggish. 

But  until  a  few  years  ago  the  various  speculations  with  refer- 
ence to  the  rapidity  of  thought,  were  nothing  more  than  specula- 
tions —  mere  guesses.  The  subjective  consciousness  can  never  re- 

(357) 


358  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY.  - 

veal  to  us  which  sensations  travel  the  faster,  for  example,  those 
of  sight  or  hearing.  The  introspective  psychologist  can  never 
give  us  any  authoritative  verdict  on  the  time  rate  of  mental  phe- 
nomena. Whether  it  takes  longer  to  choose  between  two  colors 
than  between  two  flowers  can  never  be  definitely  settled  by  the 
student  who  adheres  uncompromisingly  to  the  old  school.  Exper- 
imental Psychology  shows  its  hand  perhaps  better  in  the  field  ol 
Psychometry  than  in  almost  any  other  department  of  the  study 
of  the  mind  and  its  forms  of  functioning.  There  is  no  fixed  stand- 
ard of  measure  in  the  inner  life  itself.  The  speeding  thought 
must  and  can  be  measured  just  as  truly  by  means  of  fixed,  ob- 
jective standards  as  can  any  of  the  phenomena  in  physical  science. 
You  can  measure  the  time-rate  of  thought  just  as  truly  as  you 
can  measure  the  time-rate  of  sound  or  light.  You  can  time  the 
rate  of  a  thought  just  as  you  can  time  the  speed  of  a  race-horse 
or  of  the  college  athlete  in  his  "  one-hundred-yard  dash." 

Instead  then,  of  the  vague  subjective  estimates  with  reference 
to  the  duration  of  the  various  mental  processes,  we  can  have 
exact  measurements,  made  after  fixed  and  unalterable  objective 
standards.  This  is  what  the  investigator  in  Experimental  Psy- 
chology actually  does.  He  proposes  to  give  us,  instead  of  the 
crude  estimates  of  the  internal  sense,  certain  precise  and  absolute 
measurements  of  the  exact  duration  of  the  individual  states  of 
consciousness.  The  time  measurement  of  the  mental  processes  is 
one  of  the  chief  ways  of  getting  at  the  mental  laws. 

The  attempts  in  this  direction  are  indeed  recent.  The  first 
ostensible  time  measurement  of  mental  acts  was  begun  by  Don- 
ders  in  1861.  At  the  time  he  began  there  were,  as  there  are  now, 
some  strong  prejudices  to  overcome.  There  were  also  immense 
difficulties  presented  in  the  line  of  inexact  and  imperfect  appa- 
ratus. So  good  a  scientist  as  Miiller  wrote  just  before  Donders 
began  his  work :  "We  shall  probably  never  attain  the  means  of 
ascertaining  the  speed  of  the  nervous  activities,  because  we  lack 
the  comparative  distances  from  which  the  speed  of  a  movement, 
in  this  respect  analogous  to  light,  could  be  computed." 

But  we  now  know  that  sensory  processes  travel  along  the  nerves 


TIME  RELATIONS  OF  MENTAL  PHENOMENA.  359 

on  an  average  of  about  one  hundred  and  ten  feet  per  second  and 
often  less  than  twenty-six  feet.  Not  many  years  ago  people  em- 
ployed such  phrases  as  "as  quick  as  thought"  as  the  extreme 
standard  of  "rapid  transit."  It  was  even  "quicker  than  light- 
ning." But  it  is  now  a  demonstrated  fact  that  while  you  are 
performing  one  of  the  simplest  mental  acts,  e.  g.,  deciding  which 
is  the  longer  word,  "cat"  or  "  Nebuchadnezzar,"  electricity  or 
light  would  flash  clear  across  the  continent. 

It  is  interesting  at  least  as  a  matter  of  history,  to  notice  that 
the  first  suggestion  that  lay  at  the  basis  of  modern  Psychom- 
etry  came  from  the  seemingly  remote  science  of  astronomy.  It 
is  related  of  Maskelyne,  the  astronomer  of  the  Greenwich  Observ- 
atory, that  in  1795  he  observed  that  his  assistant,  Kinnebrook, 
always  noted  the  passing  of  stars  across  the  meridian  from  .5 
to  .8  seconds  too  late,  and  thinking  such  negligence  inexcusable, 
discharged  him  from  his  employ.  Later,  in  1820,  in  comparing 
his  astronomical  calculations  with  those  of  others,  Bessel  dis- 
covered what  is  known  as  the  "personal  equation." 

Suppose  the  meridian  is  at  the  point  x  and  the  star  is  first 
at  a,  and  a  second  after  is  at  o. 


The  exact  instant  the  transit  occurs,  i.  e.,  the  precise  moment 
at  which  the  star  passes  the  point  x,  is  recorded,  and  it  is  found 
that  the  several  astronomers  always  differ  in  their  records  as  to 
the  time  of  transit.  They  use  the  same  standards  or  units  of 
measure,  the  same  kind  of  apparatus,  the  very  same  instruments, 
and  get  different  results.  This  difference,  then,  is  of  subjective 
origin.  One  observer  can  see  and  record  quicker  than  can  his 
fellow  observer^  By  "personal  equation,"  then,  is  meant  "such 
systematic  errors  in  observation  as  originate  in  the  observer  him* 
self,  in  distinction  from  those  errors  due  to  instrumental  and 
atmospheric  conditions." 

Differences  due  to  personal  equation  vary  from  .3  sec.  to  more 


360  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

than  one  second,  and  vary  according  to  the  hour  of  the  day,  the 
circulation  of  the  blood,  fatigue  and  other  causes.* 

Next  to  astronomy,  Psychology  owes  a  debt  to  physiological 
experiment  for  opening  the  way  for  researches  upon  the  time-rate 
of  mental  phenomena.  In  1850  Helmholtz  measured  in  a  precise 
manner  the  time  of  the  transmission  of  nerve  action  through  a 
given  nerve  length,  calculating  the  velocity  of  nerve  transmission. 

These  deliverances  of  astronomy  and  physiology  are,  of  course, 
but  introductory  to  the  problem  before  us :  the  measurement  of 
the  duration  or  time  rate  of  the  mental  processes.  Yet  they  do 
furnish  certain  elements  that  lie  at  the  basis  of  our  calculation. 
Within  recent  years  there  has  been  great  improvement  in  spe- 
cialization of  methods  and  modification  of  measuring  apparatus, 
so  that  we  now  have  a  body  of  facts  and  generalizations  that 
are  indeed  quite  valuable  to  every  student  of  mind  and  its  ac- 
tivities. 

Thegeneral  problem  in  all  the  attempts  at  such  measurement  as 
here  indicated,  is  practically  the  same.  This  problem  is  to  de- 
termine by  precise  measurement  the  exact  length  of  the  interval 
which  elapses  between  the  time  a  certain  end-organ  of  sense  is 
stimulated,  and  some  form  of  resulting  motion,  which  motion  is 
really  made  to  signify  that  the  sensation  has  been  perceived. 
For  example,  you  are  told  that  a  bell  is  about  to  strike,  and 
as  soon  as  you  have  heard  the  sound,  you  are  to  press  the  elec- 
tric key  before  you.  The  stimulus  may  consist  of  a  sound  (e.g., 
a  bell,  musical  note,  falling  ball,  or  click  of  an  electric  key),  a 
touch,  a  stimulus  of  pressure,  heat  or  cold,  or  it  may  be  a  visual 
stimulus,  such  as  the  appearanceof  one  or  more  colors  or  figures, 
letters  or  words.  The  resulting  motion  is  usually  the  pressing 
of  the  finger  upon  an  electric  key,  or  speaking  into  a  < « speech 
key,"  or  merely  parting  the  lips.  The  quickest  movement  that 
can  be  used  in  such  experiments,  to  designate  that  the  sensation 
has  been  received,  is  the  most  advantageous  because  there  is  less 
room  for  variation.  By  a  large  number  of  experiments,  Dessoir 

*  For  the  best  discussion  of  "  The  Personal  Equation  "  see  the  interesting  and 
exhaustire  article  of  Prof.  Sanford  in  "American  Journal  of  Psychology,"  Vol.  II. 


TIME  RELATIONS  OF  MENTAL  PHENOMENA.          361 

found  this  most  rapid  movement  to  be  that  made  by  bringing 
the  thumb  and  index  finger  into  contact  with  each  other.  Ewald 
declares  the  quickest  form  of  reaction  is  simply  to  lift  the  finger 
from  the  key.  Dessoir  has  devised  a  finger  contact  key  that  is 
very  simple  but  effective.  Two  metallic  thimbles  are  placed  in 
circuit.  One  of  these  thimbles  is  worn  on  the  thumb,  and  the 
other  on  the  index  finger,  and  electrical  contact  is  made  by 
bringing  finger  and  thumb  together.  A  very  good  piece  of  appa- 
ratus is  a  new  and  modified  form  of  the  speech  key,  in  which  the 
electrical  circuit  is  made  and  broken  by  the  movement  of  the  lips. 
Thus  you  start  the  chronoscope  when  you  present  a  column  of 
figures  to  the  eye  for  the  subject  to  add,  which  he  does  as  rapidly 
as  possible;  he  stops  the  chronoscope  by  breaking  the  electric 
circuit  in  parting  his  lips  when  he  announces  the  result  of  his 
mental  operations.  It  might  be  of  interest  to  know  that  we  can 
measure  as  small  a  time  interval  as  yg-jnnrfr  Parfc  °*  a  8econd 
with  reasonable  accuracy. 

All  endeavors  to  measure  the  time  rate  of  the  mental  processes 
begin  with  the  problem  of  simple  reaction  time.  By  simple  reac- 
tion time  is  meant  the  time  that  elapses  between  a  single  stimu- 
lus, the  quality  of  which  was  known  beforehand,  and  a  predesig- 
nated  movement.  Let  us  together  perform  an  experiment  to 
illustrate  simple  reaction  time,  and  I  think  we  will  have  a  clearer 
notion  of  what  is  meant.  The  experiment,  which  we  plot  be- 
forehand, consists  simply  in  this:  I  agree  to  press  the  electric 
key  on  which  my  finger  is  resting  as  soon  as  I  feel  you  touch 
my  forehead  with  a  pencil.  Now  the  time  that  elapses  between 
your  touching  my  forehead  and  my  pressing  the  electric  button 
would  be  rightly  called  simple  reaction  time. 

You  say  at  Once  that  that  is  such  a  simple  experiment.  Well,  let 
me  remind  you  that  the  simplest  of  reaction  times  is  a  very  com- 
plex affair.  There  are  no  less  than  five  distinct  elements  in  this 
shortest  of  mental  reactions:  (1)  The  impression  of  the  sense- 
organ,  as  when  you  touch  my  forehead  with  the  pencil;  (2)  the 
transmission  of  the  impulse  along  the  appropriate  nerve  fibers  to 
the  brain;  (3)  the  transformation  of  this  sensation  impulse  into 


362  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

a  motor  brain  process ;  (4)  the  conduction  of  this  motor  impulse 
outward  to  the  organ  that  is  to  be  moved.  In  our  simple  experi- 
ment it  is  the  transmission  of  the  motor  impulse  to  the  finger 
that  is  to  press  the  electric  button.  (5)  The  contraction  of  the 
muscle  or  the  setting  free  of  the  muscular  energy,  as  in  the 
actual  movement  of  the  reacting  finger. 

The  factor  of  most  vital  interest  to  the  psychologist  is  the  one 
numbered  (3),  the  real  central  or  brain  factor  in  this  whole  pro- 
cess. But,  taking  up  each  of  these  factors  in  turn,  we  have  to 
consider : 

(1)  The  inertia,  of  the  sense  organs  is  determined  by  meas- 
uring how  rapidly  a  number  of  sense  stimuli  may  follow  one  an- 
other without  being  fused  together.  Thus,  how  rapidly  may 
touches  be  made  upon  the  skin  at  the  extremity  of  the  index 
finger,  that  my  mind  may  perceive  them  as  single,  separate  and 
disparate  sense  impressions?  Or  how  fast  can  electric  sparks 
flash  before  my  eye  and  I  still  be  able  to  perceive  each  separate 
flash?  You  can  readily  see  that,  since  the  nervous  system  is  con- 
structed as  it  is,  at  least  some  small  fragment  of  time  must  elapse 
before  the  nerve  elements  are  aroused.  Also  that  when  they  are 
once  excited,  the  effects  of  the  arousement  would  continue  for 
some  little  time  after  the  stimulation  itself  has  ceased. 

Experiments  with  reference  to  the  inertia  of  the  sense  organs 
have  been  most  satisfactory  in  the  realms  of  touch,  hearing  and 
sight.  With  reference  to  touch,  it  must  be  said  that  the-different 
parts  of  the  skin  differ  so  with  respect  to  sensitiveness  and  power  of 
recovering  from  former  stimulations,  that  we  have  no  general  re- 
sults for  all  parts  of  the  body  where  sensations  of  contact  may  be 
experienced.  You  remember  that  the  skin  over  the  lips  is  so  sensi- 
tive that  the  two  divider's  points  may  be  very  close  together  and 
still  be  felt  as  two,  while  if  applied  to  the  small  of  the  back,  they 
must  be  as  far  apart  as  two  and  one-half  or  three  inches  in  order 
to  be  perceived  as  two.  So  with  reference  to  the  rapidity  with 
which  touch  stimulations  may  be  applied  and  yet  felt  as  separate 
and  discrete.  The  most  satisfactory  experiments,  I  think,  were 
those  of  Sergi,  who  found  that  as  many  as  1,000  touch  stimula- 


TIME  RELATIONS  OF  MENTAL  PHENOMENA.          363 

tions  could  be  applied  to  the  finger  and  yet  be  felt  as  discrete.  With 
reference  to  hearing,  it  has  been  found  by  experiment  that  the 
noise  of  the  electric  spark,  heard  with  one  ear  only,  has  been  dis- 
tinguished at  intervals  of  only  .002  of  a  second.  The  number  of 
separate  sensations  of  sound  possible  under  the  most  favorable 
conditions  is,  therefore,  about  500  in  a  second.  For  vision  the 
stimulations  must  be  as  far  apart  as  -^  of  a  second.  You  see  then 
that  the  time  sense  of  the  finger  is  most  sensitive,  since  it  can  per- 
ceive ToVo  °*  a  second  5  that  of  the  ear  is  next  (-g-J-g-  of  a  second), 
and  the  eye  is  comparatively  slow,  being  able  to  perceive  accu- 
rately not  less  than  ^5  of  a  second.  As  yet  no  satisfactory 
method  has  been  devised  for  measuring  the  time  sense  in  the 
smell  and  taste  domain.  The  inertia  of  these  two  senses  cannot 
be  computed  with  any  reasonable  degree  of  accuracy. 

The  rate  at  which  a  nervous  impulse  may  be  transmitted 
has  been  determined  by  experiment  upon  both  animals  and  man. 
It  varies  with  different  individuals,  under  different  conditions  and 
in  different  nerves.  As  already  intimated,  the  sensory  processes 
travel  along  the  nerves  on  an  average  of  only  110  feet  per 
second,  and  often  less  than  26  feet.  This  is  exceedingly  and  sur- 
prisingly slow  when  we  stop  to  think  that  light  travels  faster 
than  180,000  miles  in  a  second.  While  you  or  I  would  be  per- 
forming the  simplest  mental  act,  electricity  would  have  shot 
across  the  continent. 

There  are  many  conditions  which  certainly  affect  the  reaction 
times  in  all  individuals  to  a  greater  or  less  extent.  These  condi- 
tions may  be  grouped  under  two  general  heads :  (a)  subjective ; 
(b)  objective.  By  the  subjective  conditions  we  mean,  of  course, 
such  as  affect  the  mental  attitude  of  the  person  reacting.  By  ob- 
jective conditions  we  mean  those  that  affect  the  external  features 
of  the  experiment.  We  shall  first  discuss  the  latter  group. 

In  the  first  place,  much  depends  upon  the  nature  of  the  impres- 
sion. The  reaction  time  will  vary  considerably  according  to  the 
organ  stimulated.  The  average  for  the  sense  of  sight  is  .185  sec., 
for  the  sense  of  touch  it  is  .147  sec.,  while  for  hearing  it  averages 
about  .136  sec.  It  is  commonly  supposed  that  sight  is  the  quick- 


364  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

est  of  the  senses ;  but  this  is  not  the  case,  as  reference  to  the  above 
figures  plainly  shows.  Hearing  is  by  long  odds,  the  quickest  of 
the  senses.  The  senses  of  taste  and  smell  are  both  much  slower 
than  the  others,  and  the  time  is  different  for  the  different  kinds 
of  taste  and  smell  stimuli.  For  smell,  oil  of  roses  takes  .275  sec., 
musk  .315  sec., and  ether  but  .255  sec.  It  requires  a  longer  time 
to  perceive  bitter  than  it  does  to  perceive  sweet  tastes;  a  longer 
time  to  perceive  acid  tastes  than  it  does  to  perceive  those  that 
are  saline  in  quality. 

In  the  second  place,  the  intensity  of  the  stimulus  plays  an  im- 
portant part.  Within  moderate  limits  the  time  decreases  as  the 
stimulus  increases.  Wundt  and  Cattell,  in  the  study  of  reaction 
time,  found  the  effect  of  increasing  the  stimuli  for  sensations  of 
sound,  to  be  something  as  follows: 

The  noise  made  by  the  hammer  falling  from  the  height  of 

Reaction  time. 

1  millimeter 0.217  sec. 

4  millimeters 0.146  sec. 

8  millimeters 0.1 32  sec. 

16  millimeters 0.135  sec. 

2  centimeters 0.161  sec. 

5  centimeters 0.176  sec. 

25  centimeters 0.159  sec. 

55  centimeters 0.094  sec. 

Berger  and  Cattell  varied  a  light  stimulus  from  7  to  23,  to 
123,  to  315,  to  1,000  units  of  intensity,  and  found  that  the  time 
for  perceiving  each  was  as  follows : 

Intensity.  Reaction  time. 

7 0.210  sec. 

23 0.184  sec. 

123 0.174  sec. 

315 0.170  sec. 

1,000 0.168  sec. 

The  third  objective  condition  that  affects  the  reaction  time  is 
the  manner  of  the  reaction.  Simple  movements  and  those  made 
familiar  by  practice,  shorten  the  reaction  time  as  compared 


TIME  RELATIONS  OF  MENTAL  PHENOMENA.          365 

with  the  more  complicated  and  unusual  movements.  Thus,  to 
announce  the  reaction  by  speech  requires  a  longer  time  than  to 
announce  it  by  pressing  the  index  finger  against  the  electric  key. 

With  reference  to  the  subjective  factors  we  would  say,  in  the 
first  place,  that  the  element  of  expectancy  shortens  reaction  time. 
The  more  definite  this  foreknowledge  is,  the  quicker  is  the  reac- 
tion. Thus,  if  a  preceding  signal,  at  an  interval  neither  too 
great  nor  too  small,  informs  us  that  we  are  about  to  be  called 
upon  to  react,  the  reaction  time  is  necessarily  diminished.  If 
we  experiment  once  with  such  a  preceding  signal,  and  then  at  an- 
other time  do  not  use  the  signal  at  all,  we  find  the  reaction  time 
shorter  in  the  second  case.  Thus,  with  the  warning  signal  Wundt 
reacted  in  0.175  sec.,  while  without  any  such  signal  it  took  him 
0.266  sec. ;  and  Gotz  Martius  found  that  with  the  signal  he  re- 
acted in  0.127  sec.,  while  without  it  0.178  sec.  were  required  to 
complete  the  reaction.  The  time-interval  required  for  perceiving 
the  sound  of  a  ball  falling  25  centimeters,  without  a  preliminary 
signal,  was  0.253  sec.,  but  with  such  a  signal,  was  reduced  to 
0.076  sec.  When  the  fall  was  5  centimeters  the  reaction  time 
was  reduced  from  0.266  sec.  to  0.175  sec.  In  order  to  secure 
such  favorable  results,  the  signal  must  be  of  a  nature  not  to  dis- 
tract the  attention  of  the  person  reacting,  and  must  precede  the 
stimulus  by  a  rather  constant  time-interval,  and  this  interval 
between  the  preliminary  signal  and  the  actual  stimulus  should 
not  be  so  long  as  to  overstrain  the  attention.  The  most  favor- 
able interval  between  signal  and  stimulus  is  from  one  to  two 
seconds. 

Again,  the  effect  of  distraction  must  be  noted.  The  distraction 
may  consist  in  having  a  disturbing  noise  in  the  room  where 
the  person  is  reacting;  or  better,  have  this  person's  mind  engaged 
in  performing  some  other  mental  task  at  the  same  time,  such  as  be- 
ginning with  the  number  9  and  adding  2  continuously.  Wundt's 
reaction  time  was  thereby  lengthened  from  0.189  sec.  to  0.313 
sec.,  when  the  disturbing  element  was  an  unusual  sound  in  the 
room.  Cattell's  reaction  time  was  lengthened  as  much  as  0.030  sec. 
when  mentally  occupied  with  simple  addition,  such  as  indicated 


366 


PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


above,  during  the  reactions.    Some  persons  are  exceedingly  sen- 
sitive to  disturbances,  while  others  are  not  at  all  so. 

A  word  must  also  be  said  with  reference  to  the  effect  of  practice 
and  the  influence  of  fatigue.  Practice  and  concentrated  attention 
increase  the  speed  of  our  mental  processes,  whilefatigue,  of  course, 
diminishes  them.  The  accuracy  is  less  when  the  person  is  fa- 
tigued, while  greater  exactness  is  induced  by  practice  and  atten- 
tion. Practice  has  been  found  to  diminish  the  reaction  time  by 
as  much  as  one-third.  Fatigue,  or  anything  else  that  makes  ex- 
cessive demands  upon  one's  nervous  energy,  such  as  the  heat  of  a 
sultry  summer  day,  or  the  enervation  that  follows  a  sleepless 
night  always  lengthens  it.  In  cases  of  idiocy,  imbecility  and  epi- 
lepsy, the  length  of  this  time  interval  for  reactions  is  greatly 
increased.  The  simple  reaction  time  of  an  old  mendicant  in  the 
alms-house  was  at  first  as  much  as  0.9952  sec.,  which  by  practice 
was  lowered  to  0.1866  sec.,  but  could  not  be  gotten  below  that 
figure.  Dr.  W.  Bevan  Lewis  furnishes  us  the  folio  wing  table  show- 
ing the  reaction  time  of  certain  of  the  epileptic  insane : 

REACTION    TIME   IN   EPILEPTIC   INSANITY. 


Sound 
Stimulus. 

Sight 
Stimulus. 

J.  J. 

B.  L. 
J.  V. 
J.  I. 
M.  C. 
W.  H. 
R.  H 
S.  F. 

R.  T. 

Depression  with  dementia,  sluggish... 
Dementia    suspicious  violent 

0.200  se 
0.219 
0.211 
0.220 
0.223 
0.223 
0.240 

0.281      ' 
0.297     ' 

c. 

e 

t 

0.232  se 
0.295 
0.251 
0.258 
0.251 
0.262 
0.265 

0.300     ' 
0.294     ' 

c. 

< 
< 

Maniacal  .gross  delusion. 

Dementia  with  excitement  . 

Hemiplegia,  querulous  

Dementia  apathy  

Advanced  dementia,  torpor  

Bright  aspect,  lively,  excitable,  but 
childish  and  unstable 

R.    Bright  and   lively  aspect,  but  of 
sluggish  intelligence  

It  might  also  be  intimated  that  the  appearance  of  sprightli- 
ness  and  quickness  does  not  of  necessity  signify  a  speedy  and  ac- 
curate performance  of  the  psycho-physical  processes  that  are 
involved  in  the  most  simple  reactions.  Of  two  youngmen  experi- 
mented upon  by  Exner,  one  was  found  to  be  of  a  very  lively 


TIME  RELATIONS  OF  MENTAL  PHENOMENA.          367 

temperament,  while  the  other  was  regarded  rather  sluggish.  Ex- 
periment revealed  that  the  simple  reaction  time  in  the  former  of 
these  two  persons  was  as  much  as  0.3311  sec.,  while  in  the  latter 
it  was  but  0.1337  sec.  This  question  of  individual  difference  was 
sufficiently  discussed  in  connection  with  the  subject  of  "personal 
equation  "  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter.  The  effects  of  drugs 
and  narcotics  upon  the  quickness  of  the  mental  processes  re- 
ceived sufficient  treatment  in  Chapter  IV.  where  Miinsterberg's 
recent  and  extensive  experiments  were  referred  to. 

We  must  now  turn  the  attention  to  the  discussion  of  the  more 
complicated  reactions.  If,  instead  of  reacting  in  a  certain  pre- 
scribed way,  previously  agreed  upon  between  reactor  and  experi- 
menter, we  have  different  sorts  of  stimuli,  each  to  be  reacted  to 
in  a  definite  way,  thus  introducing  the  element  of  adaptation  or 
selection,  we  have  a  complex  or  discriminative  reaction.  Let  me 
illustrate  the  difference  between  the  two  kinds  of  reaction.  Sup- 
pose you  are  facing  the  black-board,  on  which  any  letter  or  char- 
acter may  be  written,  but  is  covered  by  a  screen  or  by  my  hand. 
As  quick  as  I  remove  my  hand  and  you  see  the  letter,  you  touch 
the  electric  key  or  react  in  any  other  way  to  signify  that  you  see 
a  letter.  In  the  second  place,  I  tell  you  that  my  hand  conceals 
either  the  letter  A  or  the  letter  B ;  if  the  letter  A  is  displayed  on 
removing  my  hand,  you  are  to  react  by  pressing  the  electric  key 
with  the  index  finger  of  the  left  hand;  if  the  letter  B  is  shown, 
you  are  to  press  the  electric  key  with  the  thumb  of  your  right 
hand.  Or ,  if  a  blue  color  is  displayed,  you  are  to  press  the  key  with 
the  index  finger  of  your  right  hand,  and  if  a  red  color,  you  are  to 
react  with  the  middle  finger  of  the  same  hand.  You  see,  then,  in 
these  two  latter  cases  we  have,  as  distinguished  from  the  first, 
simple  reaction  plus  selection,  which  selection  depends  upon  a 
definite  recognition  of  the  stimulus  (e.  g.,  whether  A  or  B;  or 
whether  red  or  blue),  and  a  choice  between  the  movements  (e.g., 
a  movement  of  the  index  or  middle  finger).  This  added  time 
made  necessary  by  the  element  of  selection  is  called  "Discrimina- 
tion Time,"  or  "Discernment  Time." 

Donders  was  the  first  to  experiment  in  this  line,  and  he  himself 


368  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

had  a  simjrfe  reaction  time  of  0.201  sec.  He  then  devised  exper- 
iments in  which  he  was  to  reach  with  the  right  hand  to  a  red  light 
and  with  the  left  hand  to  a  white  light.  This  latter  complicated 
form  of  reaction  took  0.355  sec.,  or  an  increase  of  0.104  sec.  This 
0.104  sec.  really  represents  the  discernment  time;  it  is  really  the 
measure  of  the  time  involved  in  the  purely  mental  processes  em- 
ployed in  the  selection  of  means  and  manner  of  reaction  to  cer- 
tain specific  stimulations. 

It  remains  for  us  to  name  the  conditions  that  affect  these  more 
complex  reactions. 

(1)  The  number  of  distinctions  and  choices  possible. 

(2)  The  foreknowledge  of  the  subject,  or  the  element  of  ex- 
pectancy on  the  part  of  the  reacting  person. 

(3)  The  complexity  of  the  impressions.    Thus,  pictures  are 
recognized  more  quickly  than  letters,  letters  more  quickly  than 
words,  English  words  more  quickly  than  words  of  a  foreign  lan- 
guage.  As  already  intimated,  the  quality  of  the  sensation  makes 
a  great  difference  with  respect  to  the  ease  of  adaptation  and  per- 
ception.   Salt  is  recognized  more  quickly  than  acid ;  acid  more 
quickly  than  sugar;  sugar  more  quickly  than  bitter;  the  rate 
for  these  various  tastes  in  adaptive  reactions  being  0.384  sec., 
0.394  sec.,  0.409  sec.  and  0.456  sec.  respectively. 

(4)  Where  overlapping  of  the  mental  processes  is  possible,  there 
is  a  consequent  shortening  of  the  reaction  time.    The  mental  pro- 
cesses do  naturally  overlap  one  another.     Compare,  for  exam- 
ple, the  time  per  word  when  reading  one  hundred  words  or  letters 
with  the  time  occupied  in  reading  a  single  word  or  letter.    Thus 
the  time  per  word  in  reading  100  words  is  0.255  sec.  and  the  time 
required  for  a  single  word  is  0.430  sec.    The  time  per  letter  when 
100  letters  are  read  is  0.224  sec.,  while  the  time  required  for  a 
single  isolated  letter   is  0.424  sec.    Professor  Cattell  made  a 
series  of  interesting  experiments  in  this  line  by  reading  letters 
through  a  slit  in  a  screen  behind  which  letters  moved  across  the 
field  of  vision.    When  the  size  of  the  slit  was  increased  so  that 
the  number  of  letters  visible  at  one  time  increased,  the  time  for 
reading  a  single  letter  was  greatly  diminished. 


TIME  RELATIONS  OF  MENTAL  PHENOMENA.          869 

We  have  yet  to  speak  of  that  form  of  reaction  generally 
grouped  under  the  rubric — "  Association  Time."  A  great  many 
reactions  must  be  viewed  as  responses  to  questions  put  by  the 
experimenter  to  the  person  reacting.  The  reactions  that  are 
comprehended  in  this  group  certainly  vary  greatly  in  character. 
We  here  give  some  of  them,  that  you  may  note  the  comparative 
quickness  of  the  various  reactions  that  come  undjer  this  class. 
When  the  questions  admit  of  more  than  a  single  answer,  of 
course  the  reaction  time  is  greatly  lengthened. 

ASSOCIATION  TIME  FOR  VARIOUS  JUDGMENTS. 

SECONDS. 

To  name  the  season  when  a  month  is  given 0.248 

To  name  the  country  in  which  a  given  city  is  situated  [Paris] 0.278 

To  tell  the  language  in  which  an  author  wrote  [Goethe] 0.262 

To  name  a  German  wine 0.485 

To  answer  the  question,  "Who  wrote  Hamlet?" 0.958 

To  tell  which  is  the  healthier,  swimming  or  dancing 1.354 

To  answer  which  is  the  more  difficult,  physics  or  chemistry? 1.500 

We  close  our  necessarily  brief  discussion  of  this  interesting 
subject  of  reaction  time  by  submitting  the  following  table,  which 
gives  in  the  terms  of  a  second  the  average  length  of  time  required 
for  some  of  our  commonest  mental  judgments: 

SECONDS. 

To  recognize  the  direction  of  a  ray  of  light , 0.011 

To  recognize  the  e olor,  when  one  of  two,  as  red  and  blue,  and  ex- 
pected to  be  seen 0.012 

To  recognize  the  direction  of  ordinary  sounds 0.015 

To  localize  mentally,  when  blindfolded,  any  place  on  our  body, 

touched  by  another  person 0.021 

Mentally  to  judge  a  distance  when  seen 0.022 

To  recognize  the  direction  of  loud  sounds 0.062 

To  recognize  capital  letters 0.180 

To  recognize  short  English  words 0.214 

To  recognize  pictures  of  objects O.L63 

To  add  single  figures 0.170 

Given  a  month,  to  name  its  season 0.354 

To  answer  the  question,  "Who  is  greater,  Virgil  or  Ovid?" 0.750 

To  answer  such  questions  as  "  Who  wrote  Hamlet?" 0.958 

To  name  a  French  writer 1.250 

JL.  P.— 24 


LESSON  XXY. 

METHODS    OF    TESTING  AND    MEASURING    THE    MENTAL  FAC- 
ULTIES,  ESPECIALLY  MEMORY  AND  ATTENTION 
IN  SCHOOL  CHILDREN. 

ONE  of  the  most  hopeful  developments  of  modern  Psychology 
is  the  attempt  to  attain  exact  measurements  of  the  mental  pro- 
cesses. This  introduction  of  a  more  and  more  exact  mode  of 
regarding  the  mental  phenomena  is  bound  to  have  important 
practical  effects  upon  the  theory  and  practice  of  education.  For 
no  less  than  three  reasons  should  the  teacher  undertake  a  syste- 
matic measurement  of  the  faculties  of  his  pupils. 

First,  a  collection  of  such  comparative  measurements  is  greatly 
needed  in  order  that  we  may  have  a  statistical  basis  for  building 
up  a  more  exact  Psychology  of  childhood.  Thus,  for  example: 
If  we  wish  to  determine  the  order  in  which  the  various  faculties 
unfold  and  develop,  it  is  almost  absolutely  necessary  that  we  be 
able  to  determine  the  date  at  which  each  particular  faculty  begins 
to  acquire  strength  and  manifest  itself  as  a  factor  in  the  child's 
mental  life. 

Second,  this  exact  measurement  of  mental  faculty  is  of  exceed- 
ingly great  importance  in  carrying  out  the  work  of  teaching  so  as 
to  attain  the  best  results.  The  success  of  any  school  or  any 
class  depends  to  a  great  extent  upon  the  arrangement  of  the 
pupils  of  that  school  or  class  according  to  their  special  capacities 
and  respective  powers.  Every  classification  of  pupils  pre-supposes 
that  the  teacher  has  made  an  estimate  of  the  child's  abilities. 
The  common  method  generally  pursued  is  an  oral  examination 
or  some  written  paper,  which  is,  however,  a  very  meager  criterion 
by  which  to  judge  the  child's  real  progress  and  mental  develop- 
ment. These  ordinary  tests  of  the  child's  mental  capacity  are 
exceedingly  crude  and  unreliable.  If  such  methods  were  em- 
(370) 


TESTING  THE  MENTAL  FACULTIES.  371 

ployed  in  the  study  of  the  various  particular  sciences,  the  con- 
clusions attained  would  be  utterly  valueless.  It  is,  therefore,  of 
the  utmost  importance,  in  order  that  the  teacher  may  classify 
the  pupils  according  to  their  real  ability,  that  we  have  a  more 
exact  method  of  measurement  of  faculty. 

Third,  by  means  of  these  exact  mental  tests  we  can  find  out 
just  what  is  the  defect  that  prevents  the  otherwise  normal  child 
from  advancing  in  knowledge  as  he  should.  Whenever  such  a 
defect  exists  it  ought  to  be  known  and  provided  for,  yet  it  is 
certainly  evident  that  many  of  these  defects  are  deeply  hidden 
and  cannot  be  discovered  unless  we  have  some  method  of  test- 
ing the  children  in  various  ways.  Very  frequently  a  child  has 
been  considered  stupid  when  the  real  difficulty  was  obtuse 
hearing.  More  than  once  does  a  pupil  find  trouble  in  singing, 
an  exercise  which  is  becoming  so  prevalent  in  our  public  schools, 
when  in  fact  he  cannot  tell  two  notes  apart  within  an  interval  of 
a  couple  of  tones.  How  exasperated  some  teachers  become  at  the 
distorted  drawings  produced  by  some  of  their  pupils,  when  the  real 
cause  of  this  incapacity  is  an  inherent  defect  in  the  child's  power 
to  estimate  distances  by  the  eye,  which  could  only  be  removed 
by  some  special  practice  or  instruction  with  reference  to  it. 

The  prime  object  of  measurement  and  testing  children  periodi- 
cally—for  example,  once  a  year— is  to  determine  whether  their 
minds  are  in  proper  condition  for  the  school  work  that  has  been 
assigned  to  them,  and  also  to  discover  whether  there  are  any  un- 
derlying defects  of  sensation  or  intelligence  that  must  be  guarded 
against  in  the  course  of  instruction,  and  finally,  to  determine 
whether  the  child  has  developed  at  the  proper  rate. 

Another  consideration  that  might  be  mentioned  is  that  Psy- 
chology can  never  attain  the  certainty  and  exactness  of  the 
physical  sciences  unless  it  be  founded  upon  experiment  and  meas- 
urement. A  step  in  this  direction,  especially  in  the  Psychology 
of  childhood,  can  easily  be  made  by  applying  a  series  of  mental 
tests  and  measurements  to  a  large  number  of  individuals.  These 
results  are  becoming  more  and  more  valuable,  not  only  to  the 
educator,  but  also  to  the  student  of  Psychology,  in  that  such 


372  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

results  throw  much  light  upon  the  mental  processes,  their  inter- 
dependence and  their  variation  under  different  circumstances. 
The  more  uniform  these  tests  are,  the  more  valuable  they  would 
be  for  purposes  of  comparing  different  school  methods,  different 
climatic  influences,  the  effect  of  the  time  of  day,  etc. 

It  is  our  purpose  in  this  chapter  to  outline  some  simple  experi- 
mental tests,  such  as  every  teacher  may  employ  to  advantage 
(with  little  or  no  apparatus),  tests  which  will  enable  him  to  dis- 
cover the  exact  nature  of  the  child's  mind  at  any  age,  with  a 
view  to  properly  guiding  it  on  its  onward  course.  The  first  test 
that  we  propose  is  a  test  of  the  condition  of  the  auditory  or  ear 
memory.  In  this  connection  it  would  not  be  out  of  place  to 
refer  to  that  long  series  of  experiments  performed  by  Professor 
Ebbinghaus,  of  Berlin. 

Professor  Ebbinghaus  subjected  himself  daily  for  two  years  to 
a  series  of  tests,  in  order  to  examine  the  powers  of  retention  and 
reproduction.  After  reading  through  a  list  of  meaningless  syl- 
lables once  he  could  remember  (that  is,  recite  without  a  fault) 
but  seven.  Sixteen  readings  were  necessary  to  learn  twelve  syl- 
lables, forty-four  readings  to  remember  twenty-four,  while  to 
retain  only  two  more,  twenty-six,  required  fifty-five  readings. 
The  second  day  of  restudying  so  as  to  remember  a  list  of  sixteen 
syllables  saved  a  number  of  seconds  very  nearly  proportionate 
to  the  number  of  readings  on  the  first  day.  With  an  unlimited 
amount  of  study  the  experimenter  could  not  retain  these  sixteen 
correctly  twenty-four  hours.  At  first  it  is  much  easier  to  forget 
such  a  senseless  list  than  later  on,  the  loss  being  measured  by 
the  number  of  seconds  required  for  a  second  relearning;  for  exam- 
ple, if  the  first  learning  took  one  thousand  seconds,  the  relearn- 
ing taking  five  hundred  seconds,  theloss  between  the  two  learnings 
would  be  one-half.  During  the  first  half-hour,  half  of  the  forget- 
ting seems  to  occur.  To  quote  directly  from  his  published  results: 

"The  initial  rapidity,  as  well  as  the  final  slowness,  as  these 
were  ascertained  under  certain  experimental  conditions,  and  for 
a  particular  individual  .  .  .  may  well  surprise  us.  An  hour 
after  the  work  of  learning  had  ceased,  forgetting  was  so  far  ad- 


TESTING  THE  MENTAL  FACULTIES.  373 

vanced  that  more  than  half  of  the  original  work  had  to  be 
applied  again  before  the  series  of  syllables  could  once  more  be  re- 
produced. Eight  hours  later  two-thirds  of  the  original  labor  had 
to  be  applied.  Gradually,  however,  the  process  of  oblivion  grew 
slower,  so  that  even  for  considerable  stretches  of  time  the  losses 
were  but  barely  ascertainable.  After  twenty -four  hours  a  third, 
after  six  days  a  fourth,  and  after  a  whole  month  a  good  fifth  of 
the  original  labor  remained  in  the  shape  of  its  after  effects,  and 
made  the  relearning  by  so  much  the  more  speedy." 

The  question  whether  an  idea  can  arouse  another  with  which 
it  was  never  in  immediate  contact  — that  is,  without  passing 
through  the  connecting  links  of  ideas  previously  used — is  among 
the  many  important  queries  raised  by  these  researches.  From 
the  deductions  which  he  made,  Dr.  Ebbinghaus  was  led  to  empha- 
size the  statements  that  there  are  changes  in  the  concentration 
of  attention,  and  that  theories  and  opinions  unconsciously  in- 
fluence the  mind  in  its  power  of  reproducing  images. 

1  'Learning  once  a  series  of  even  sixteen 'nonsense-syllables' 
saves  time  on  attempting  to  relearn  this  series,  in  whatever  man- 
ner its  members,  when  relearned,  are  related  to  each  other."  The 
strength  of  association,  when  estimated  by  this  saving  of  time 
and  relearning,  is  shown  in  the  following  table: 

Saving  on  time  on  relearning  is,  between  contiguous  members..      .33  sec. 

Saving  on  time  on  relearning  is,  skipping  one  syllable 10.8     " 

Saving  on  time  on  relearning  is,  skipping  two  syllables 7.0     " 

Saving  on  time  on  relearning  is,  skipping  three  syllables 5.8     " 

Saving  on  time  on  relearning  is,  skipping  four  syllables 3.3     " 

During  his  experiments  in  learning  and  relearning  these  "non- 
sense syllables"  Ebbinghaus  found  indications  of  a  remarkable 
rhythm  in  attention.  "  There  is,"  bethinks, "  a  periodic  oscillation 
of  the  mental  susceptibility  to  intense  concentration,  in  which  *  the 
increasing  fatigue  seems  to  vary  about  a  gradually  shifting  middle 
position.' "  Thus  in  eighty-four  experiments  with  six  sixteen-syl- 
lable  series,  the  mean  time  for  learning  the  first  series  was  191 
seconds;  for  the  second,  224  seconds;  for  the  third,  206  seconds; 


374  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

for  the  fourth,  218  seconds ;  for  the  fifth,  210  seconds ;  for  the 
sixth,  213  seconds. 

These  experiments  of  Prof.  Ebbinghaus  have  been  verified  by 
the  more  recent  and  extensive  investigations  of  Prof.  G.  E.  Miiller 
and  Dr.  F.  Schumann,  of  the  University  of  Gottingen.* 

The  test  that  we  have  in  mind  is  nothing  so  complicated  as 
set  forth  in  the  experiments  of  these  scientists.  It  consists  sim- 
ply in  the  reading  of  a  number  of  meaningless  syllables  and  series 
of  consonants  or  numbers,  and  asking  the  child  to  repeat  as  many 
of  them  as  he  can  remember.  You  will  find  here  a  series  of  tests 
that  I  employed,  with  the  assistance  of  thirty  or  more  teachers  in 
the  State  of  Illinois,  in  testing  the  auditory  memory  of  school 
children. 

SCHOOL  TESTS  FOR  THE  AUDITORY  MEMORY. 


(1) 

4 

9 

6 

3 

7 

5 

1 

8 

(2) 

7 

1 

5 

9 

4 

7 

2 

6 

(3) 

5 

7 

2 

6 

9 

4 

8 

3 

(4) 

2 

5 

8 

6 

4 

9 

7 

3 

(5) 

6 

8 

4 

7 

1 

9 

3 

5 

(«) 

9 

4 

7 

1 

5 

3 

6 

2 

(7) 

3 

5 

1 

6 

7 

9 

4 

8 

(8) 

8 

2 

9 

1 

5 

3 

4 

7 

(9) 

7 

2 

5 

9 

6 

8 

3 

1 

10) 

5 

8 

7 

4 

9 

2 

6 

8 

*  " Experimentelle  Beitrage  zur  Untersuchung  des  Gedachtnisses"  Leipzig,  1893.  Thip 
valuable  work  reached  me  too  late  to  permit  of  a  resum6  here,  which  I  greatly  re- 
gret.—W.  0.  K. 


TESTING  THE  MENTAL  FACULTIES.  375 

The  first  set  of  these  tests  is  made  up  of  the  numerical  digits. 
The  teacher  reads  a  single  series,  for  example,  these:  4,  9,  6,  3, 
7,  5,  1,  8.  About  ten  seconds  are  employed  in  enunciating  these 
numbers;  immediately  after  they  are  read  the  child  is  asked 
to  repeat  as  many  of  them  as  he  can  remember  and  in  as  nearly 
the  same  order  as  possible.  The  second  series  of  tests  here  ap- 
pended is  made  up  of  letters,  consonants  only  being  employed, 
and  the  test  was  performed  in  the  same  manner. 

SCHOOL   TESTS  FOR  THE    AUDITORY  MEMORY. 

(1)  b       k       1       z       s       d       r       n 

(2)  t       r       z       g       h       t       cm 

(3)  s   g   r   t   n   k   1   d 
(4)tgdkxmzr 
(5)   t   d   r   1   b   k   q   n 
(6)lwtmpxkz 

(7)  f   g   s   1   z    d   m   b 

(8)  qtrzlmpc 
(9)vdsztnhg 

(10)       f        k       r       t       1       m       g       j 

Perhaps  one  child  will  remember  five  digits  or  letters,  in  that 
case  his  auditory  memory  is  expressed  as  a  fraction  of  the  task  set 
before  him.  If  he  remember  six  out  of  the  eight  members  of  the 
series,  his  grade  for  auditory  memory  would  be  six-eighths  or 
75  per  cent.  Some  one  else  will  have  remembered  more  or  fewer, 
and  his  grade  would  of  course  be  greater  or  less. 

These  tests  maybe  modified  for  any  grade  of  pupils  as  may  be 


376  .PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

necessary.  In  the  highest  grade  probably  as  many  as  ten  or 
twelve  digits  or  letters  can  be  employed  in  each  series;  in  the 
middle  sch6ol  grades  possibly  no  more  than  eight  members 
should  be  embraced  in  a  series.  In  the  still  lower  grades  it  would 
be  well  not  to  employ  more  than  six  numbers  in  each  series,  and 
in  the  lowest  grades  even  a  short  series  should  be  read  over 
three  or  four  times,  so  that  the  child's  powers  may  not  be  too 
heavily  taxed.  As  a  result  of  experiments  such  as  herein  indi- 
cated upon  no  less  than  8,000  Illinois  school  children,  I  have 
reached  the  following  conclusions : 

First. — The  limit  of  the  memory  span  for  the  pupils  in  the  public 
schools  of  Illinois,  in  the  grammar  and  high  school  grades  is 
seven. 

Second.— This  memory  span  indicates  the  power  and  concen- 
tration on  the  part  of  the  pupil. 

Third. — The  girls  have  better  ear  memories  than  the  boys. 

Fourth. — The  memory  power  of  the  ear  increases  with  age  rather 
than  with  the  growth  of  intelligence,  showing  that  actual  expe- 
rience is  much  better  as  a  factor  of  development  in  this  line  than 
books. 

Fifth.— With  practice,  the  ability  of  the  pupils  to  remember 
groups  of  digits  or  letters  greatly  increases. 

Sixth.— The  experiments  show  that  some  of  the  pupils  in  our 
Illinois  schools  suffer  from  fatigue.  This  indicates  that  the  work 
in  certain  schools  is  either  very  poorly  arranged,  or  else  excessive. 

Seventh. — These  memory  images  pass  through  three  stages  in 
leaving  the  mind.  The  first  sign  of  a  disturbed  memory  is  a  con- 
fusion of  the  order  in  which  the  letters  or  figures  are  given ;  that 
is,  the  pupil  does  not  remember  the  series  in  the  precise  order  in 
which  they  were  pronounced.  Second,  a  loss  of  certain  of  the 
numbers  entirely,  and  the  substitution  of  other  figures  or  letters 
for  them ;  and  third,  a  complete  loss  of  certain  of  the  letters  or 
figures. 

Eighth.— Ideas,  or  memory  images  at  the  ends  of  the  series  are 
better  remembered  than  those  which  occur  at  the  middle;  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  first  of  these  numbered  tests  indicated  above,  the 


TESTING  THE  MENTAL  FACULTIES.  377 

figures  4  and  9  at  the  beginning  and  1  and  8  at  the  end  of  the 
series  would  be  better  remembered  than  the  figure  3  or  7  at  the 
middle  of  the  series.  If  we  find  that  the  pupil  cannot  remember 
so  well  at  noon  as  he  could  in  the  morning,  and  if  he  remembers 
still  worse  in  the  afternoon  than  he  did  at  noon,  we  may  conclude 
that  he  is  either  poorly  nourished,  or  that  the  school  work  is 
fatiguing,  and  therefore  excessive. 


The  next  test  should  be  made  upon  the  visual,  or  eye  memory. 
For  this  purpose  a  line  such  as  the  one  shown  above  may  be 
used.  I  have  several  of  these  standard  lines  printed  upon  small 
bits  of  cardboard  and  distribute  them.  I  then  collect  these  cards 
and  ask  each  child  to  select  from  memory  a  line  that  is  the  same 
length,  out  of  a  group  of  five  lines  of  various  lengths,  which  I  then 
place  before  him.  If  he  have  a  good  eye  memory,  he  will  have 
little  difficulty  in  selecting  the  line  of  proper  length. 

A  similar  test  might  be  proposed  in  which  various  syllables 
might  be  placed  upon  a  card  in  some  convenient  form.  This  card 
should  be  held  up  before  the  child  for  a  few  seconds,  and  he  then 
asked  to  repeat  as  many  of  the  syllables  as  he  can  remember. 

A  third  test  might  be  advised  in  which  visual,  auditory  and 
motor  memory  are  combined.  I  hold  up  the  card  as  before 
and  he  is  to  read  the  syllables  or  letters  aloud.  In  this  way 
the  child  not  only  sees  and  hears  them,  but  moves  the  muscles  of 
the  larynx  and  tongue,  which  movement  furnishes  him  with  an 
additional  memory  clue. 

Another  test  that  might  be  employed  in  any  schoolroom  may 
be  called  a  test  upon  powers  of  visual  comparison. 

Give  to  each  child  a  clean  card  with  nothing  but  a  single  hori- 
zontal line  drawn  thereon,  like  this : 


Ask  him  to  bisect  it  exactly  in  the  middle  or  as  nearly  so  as 
possible,  judging  the  middle  point  with  the  aid  of  the  eye  alone, 
no  rule  or  measure  being  employed.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  pupil 


378  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

will  divide  the  line  exactly  at  the  middle  point.  The  amount  of 
error  can  t;hen  be  measured  by  the  use  of  a  millimeter  scale  and 
calculated  in  per  cent,  with  facility  and  accuracy.  Now  this  ex- 
ercise not  only  tests  the  visual  judgment  or  comparison,  but  it 
also  cultivates  accurate  perception.  Thechild  observes  more  and 
more  closely  with  each  successive  exercise  and  finally  reaches  ab- 
solute perfection  in  his  judgments,  and  close  attention  is  also 
induced. 

Draw  a  line — e.  g.}  six  inches  long,  on  the  black-board.  Ask  all 
to  observe  it  closely;  erase  the  line;  then  ask  your  class  to  re- 
produce it— each  draw  a  line  as  nearly  as  possible  the  same  length 
as  your  original  line.  In  the  first  exercise  you  will  have  lines  of 
as  many  different  lengths  as  you  have  pupils.  Measure  the  error 
in  each  line,  and  calculate  the  grade  of  each  pupil  for  visual  mem- 
ory in  per  cents.  Or  to  make  it  easier  and  more  simple,  draw 
the  standard  line  as  suggested  above;  then  erase,  then  draw  five 
lines  of  different  lengths,  one  which  is  the  same  as  the  first  or 
standard  line,  the  other  four  various  lengths,  but  each  differing 
only  a  little  from  the  standard  line,  being  either  a  trifle  longer  or 
shorter.  Number  these  lines,  and  then  ask  your  pupils  to  select 
the  one  of  the  four  which  is  like  the  original  standard  line  which 
you  drew  and  then  erased.  An  attentive  eye  and  a  good  visual 
memory  certainly  result  from  this  cultivation. 

Fourth. — We  should  also  test  the  muscle  memory.  This  is  the 
form  of  memory  that  every  schoolboy  uses  in  playing  his  games; 
e.  g.,  in  base  ball  every  boy  knows  what  it  is  that  guides  him 
when  he  "feels  for  the  ball "  with  his  bat.  It  guides  every  child 
in  his  simplest  movements,  such  as  walking,  running,  leaping, 
writing,  and  even  sitting.  How  important  then  is  its  cultivation ! 
A  simple  test,  and  at  the  same  time  a  means  for  such  cultivation, 
is  found  in  the  teacher's  requesting  each  pupil  to  draw  on  the 
slate  or  blackboard  a  line  of  a  certain  length  —  e.  g.,  four  inches, 
then  erasing  the  line,  let  him  endeavor  with  his  eyes  closed  to 
draw  a  similar  line.  The  error  can  be  measured  in  millimeters  and 
calculated  in  per  cents,  for  each  pupil. 

We  should  also  test  the  child's  accuracy  in  touching  a  given 


TESTING  THE  MENTAL  FACULTIES.  379 

point.  I  place  before  the  child  a  card  upon  which  there  are  several 
small  dots  and  request  him  to  touch  one  of  the  dots  with  a  pen- 
cil, the  arm  being  held  free  above  the  desk.  His  hand  will  not 
move  to  the  exact  point  which  his  will  commands  and  he  is  sure 
to  make  some  sort  of  an  error.  After  he  makes  a  dot,  you  can 
measure  the  error  by  taking  a  ruler  or  a  pair  of  compasses  esti- 
mating the  distance  between  the  original  dot  that  you  desig- 
nated for  him  to  touch  and  the  one  actually  made  by  the  child. 

Another  interesting  test,  but  at  the  same  time  exceedingly 
simple,  is  to  lay  before  the  child  a  sheet  of  paper  upon  which  there 
are  two  dots  separated  by  a  distance  of  from  three  to  five  inches. 
Ask  him  to  connect  the  two  by  a  straight  line,  the  paper  being 
so  placed  that  such  a  line  will  necessarily  be  horizontal.  To  meas- 
ure the  error  of  the  child,  for  he  surely  will  make  an  error,  lay  a 
straight  ruler  across  the  dots  and  you  can  easily  detect  the 
deviation  from  the  true  straight  line. 

Thus  I  might  go  on  and  suggest  a  half-dozen  tests  for  each  of 
the  ten  or  twelve  senses.  Tests  for  vision,  hearing,  taste,  touch, 
temperature  sense,  pressure  sense,  sense  of  motion,  and  the  like; 
but  these  that  I  have  given  will  illustrate  what  is  meant  by 
the  measurement  of  faculty.  A  few  general  statements  are,  how- 
ever, necessary. 

Two  elements  enter  into  all  education  —  first,  organism ;  second, 
environment.  Both  are  of  the  greatest  importance,  both  must 
be  thoroughly  studied.  Any  method  of  teaching  that  fails  to 
consider  the  content  of  the  child's  mind  on  entering  school  and 
fails  to  take  note  of  its  tendencies  to  development  must  end  in 
failure.  Very  often  repressive  measures  that  quite  paralyze  his 
nature  are  employed  in  order  to  adapt  his  organism  to  the  envi- 
ronment, instead  of  adapting  the  environment  to  his  organism. 

Again  all  education  must  begin  with  the  education  of  the  senses. 
Not  any  single  sense  but  all  of  them, if  you  would  have  an  evenly 
developed  pupil.  Too  often  we  think  we  are  teaching  "  observa- 
tional studies"  if  we  appeal  only  to  the  eye,  forgetting  that  there 
is  an  observation  of  the  ear,  of  the  finger,  and  of  all  the  avenues 
of  sense,  as  well  as  the  eye.  Furthermore,  every  pupil  on  entering 


380  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

school  is  one-sided  in  his  development.  His  hand  has  been  devel- 
oped at  the  expense  of  his  eye,  or  his  eye  at  the  expense  of  his 
ear,  and  so  forth.  Now  the  teacher  can,  by  means  of  such  simple 
tests  as  those  I  have  hinted  at,  tell  just  along  what  lines  his 
pupil  has  been  developed,  apply  the  correctives  and  guide  him 
accordingly.  Thus  it  is  that  Experimental  Psychology  has  jus- 
tified itself  in  offering  a  sure  and  exact  method  of  investigation 
into  the  content  of  a  child's  mind  with  a  view  to  its  best 
development. 


LESSON  XXVI. 
CHILD-STUDY:  THE  BASIS  OF  EXACT  PEDAGOGICAL  METHOD. 

THE  importance  of  the  study  of  children  is  beginning  to  be 
recognized  as  one  of  the  prominent  features  in  the  search  for 
practical  methods  to  employ  in  the  education  of  children.  In  for- 
mer years  the  study  of  educational  methods  was  entirely  confined 
to  the  study  of  mere  theories ;  but  little  by  little  educators  have 
come  to  see  that  after  all  it  is  of  much  more  importance  for  teach- 
ers to  study  the  minds  of  their  pupils  as  they  come  into  contact 
with  them  day  by  day  in  the  schoolrooms.  Never  before  in  the 
history  of  education  has  the  importance  of  the  study  of  Psy- 
chology been  recognized  so  widely  as  at  the  present  time.  Every 
teacher  is  inquiring  as  to  the  best  and  most  helpful  text-book  for 
this  particular  line,  thinking  that  a  book  will  be  able  to  supply 
the  required  need ;  but  scientific  child-study  means  more  than  the 
hearing  of  lectures  or  the  study  of  systematic  Psychology  as 
presented  in  the  various  formal  text-books.  Prof.  Royce  expresses 
the  matter  well  when  he  says :  "  First,  then,  let  the  young  teacher 
remember  that  it  is  not  the  system  of  psychological  science  nor 
the  exhaustive  theory  of  the  power  of  the  human  mind  that  he 
needs,  but  rather  the  psychological  spirit ;  that  is,  the  love  and 
skill  that  are  required  for  the  purpose  of  mental  diagnosis." 
While  I  would  be  the  last  to  yield  to  an  undervaluation  of  the 
study  of  Psychology  in  the  formal  way,  I  sincerely  believe  that 
the  greatest  practical  benefit  it  can  render  to  the  teacher  consists 
in  the  help  that  it  can  furnish  him  in  his  study  of  the  child's  mind. 
It  is  gratifying  to  know  that  this  new  zest  for  child  study,  this 
eagerness  to  make  the  child's  mind  an  open  page,  is  taking  the 
precedence  of  all  other  discussions  in  our  educational  meetings. 
It  is  also  a  source  of  gratification,  and  encouragement  as  well, 

(381) 


382  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

that  the  study  of  children  is  the  most  practical  of  all  possible 
studies,,  for  it  relates  to  the  mental  health  and  to  the  economy  of 
human  energy.  Indeed,  it  is  the  only  thing  that  can  give  an  exact 
scientific  basis  to  educational  methods,  for  education  means 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  to  make  the  finest  specimen  of  man- 
hood and  womanhood  possible;  to  produce  an  individual  rich  in 
strength,  developing  the  child  to  its  fullest  maturity  in  size  and 
power. 

The  question  is  often  put:  "  Is  there  not  great  danger  in  allow- 
ing teachers  to  experiment  upon  children  ?  "  The  answer  of  Colo- 
nel Parker  cannot  be  improved  upon :  "Not  a  tithe  of  the  danger 
there  is  in  allowing  supervisors  to  prescribe  methods,  and  rigidly 
enforce  the  literal  following  of  a  course  of  study.  The  most  awful 
experiment  is  to  put  a  girl,  fresh  from  the  high  school  or  a  cram 
examination,  without  a  scintilla  of  the  art  of  teaching,  or  a  faint 
suspicion  of  it,  in  charge  of  fifty  immortal  souls;  and  next  to  that, 
even  more  awful  if  possible,  to  put  a  college  graduate,  chock  full  of 
conceit  and  of  little  else,  at  the  head  of  a  school.  Thousands  of 
schools  are  now  in  charge  of  principals  who  have  not  the  faintest 
idea  how  to  direct  and  teach  teachers.  There  must  needs  be  experi- 
ments, but  let  us  have  those  experiments  which  are  prompted  by 
an  all-controlling  desire  to  do  good  rather  than  the  experiments 
of  ignorance.  The  strongest  influence  of  a  teacher  consists  not  in 
his  teaching  of  itself,  but  in  his  attitude  towards  knowledge,  and 
its  relation  to  education.  If  the  teacher  is  everlastingly  in  love 
with  knowledge,  if  this  love  speaks  in  his  eyes  and  charms  in 
his  manner,  little  else  is  needed  to  make  his  pupils  lovers  of 
knowledge.  If  the  teacher  is  thoughtfully  studying  the  needs 
of  each  of  his  pupils,  and  striving  to  apply  the  best  conditions 
for  the  highest  self-effort,  he  is  not  an  experimenter  in  the  com- 
mon acceptance  of  the  term;  the  difference  is  world-wide  be- 
tween an  investigation  in  the  sense  of  studying  a  profession 
and  an  experiment  which  implies  the  destruction  of  material 
used." 

The  field  of  child  study  for  the  teacher  comprises  more  than 
what  is  strictly  included  in  the  term  "  Psychology  of  Childhood." 


CHILD-STUDY.  383 

The  teacher  is,  and  must  be  interested  in  anything  that  affects 
the  child's  activity,  his  growth,  health, and  ability  to  work.  Such 
child  study  must  include  every  investigation  or  observation  of 
children  that  has  any  relation  whatever  to  education.  Anew  and 
simple  method,  much  more  practicable  than  that  invogueso  long 
in  Europe,  in  which  the  results  were  expressed  in  forms  of  compli- 
cated tables  and  unintelligible  curves,  is  that  devised  by  Principal 
E.H.Russell,  of  the  Worcester  Normal  School.  It  may  now  be  em- 
ployed elsewhere,  but  it  has  been  worked  to  the  best  advantage 
in  this  particular  school,  in  which  it  had  its  origin  about  eight 
years  ago.  Professor  Russell  does  not  limit  the  field  of  observa- 
tion by  proposing  certain  definite  questions  as  to  the  habits, 
reasoning,  feeling,  likes  and  dislikes  of  the  child,  and  so  on;  but 
prefers  to  have  his  corps  of  pupils  and  well-trained  graduates 
note  any  salient  act  or  remark  of  a  child  in  an  exact  manner. 
These  records  are  then  filed  at  the  normal  school,  placed  in 
groups  under  certain  convenient  headings,  such  as  imagination, 
memory,  anger,  fear,  deceit,  reasoning,  etc.  These  topics  extend 
over  the  whole  domain  of  Psychology,  and  the  best  and  most 
typical  of  these  records  are  employed  in  teaching,  instead  of  using 
a  cut-and-dried  text-book.  To  make  them  more  practicable,  aa 
well  as  accessible  to  the  uninitiated,  Mr.  Russell  has  avoided  tab- 
ulating them,  but  is  publishing  them  as  they  stand  in  short  par- 
agraphs, where  they  can  be  cited  by  any  one,  on  simply  referring 
to  certain  numbers  and  chapters,  as  one  would  to  a  Bible  verse. 
For  example,  under  the  chapter,  "Reasoning  of  Children,"  you 
will  find  the  following  paragraph,  numbered  "  204:  " 

[Child,  four  years  old.]  E.'s  mother  is  afraid  of  cats,  and  hates  to 
touch  them.  E.  did  something,  and  his  mother  said  she  was  going  to 
whip  him  for  it.  When  she  said  this,  E.  was  standing  near  the  door  and 
he  went  out.  In  a  few  minutes  he  came  in  with  the  cat  in  his  hands.  He 
got  very  near  to  his  mother,  and  then  said,  "Now,  mamma,  if  you  lick 
me,  the  cat  will  bite  you  all  up."  Mother.—"  E.,  let  the  cat  go  out."  E. — 
"  Will  you  lick  me?  If  you  do,  I  won't  let  the  cat  go,  and  he'll  scratch 
you,  if  I  tell  him  to."  Mother.—"  Well,  I  won't  lick  you  if  you  let  it  go." 
E.  let  the  cat  go,  and  laughed  for  a  long  time ;  and  ever  since  then,  if  she 
says  anything  to  him,  he  will  say,  "  Mamma,  I'll  get  the  cat  I " 


384  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Under  the  rubric,  "Imitation,"  we  find  such  paragraphs  as 
these: 

S.  watched  her  children  during  a  recess.  "  Two  children  began  to  play 
'see-saw'  (a  game  in  which  children  take  each  other's  hands,  and  sway, 
back  and  forth  in  rhythmic  motion).  In  about  two  minutes  as  many  as 
34  out  of  50  children  began  to  play  it." 

"I  have  been  watching  W.  and  L.  for  a  number,  of  months,  and  I  find 
that,  almost  without  exception,  if  one  does  anything,  the  other  will  imi- 
tate it.  Both  have  small  rocking-chairs,  and  if  W.  sits  down  in  his  chair, 
L.  will  also  sit  down  in  hers.  If  L.  rolls  marbles  on  the  floor,  W.  will 
also." 

"Bessie  was  digging  in  the  snow,  and  her  cloak  was  unbuttoned  and 
flying  open.  I  said,  'Why,  Bessie,  why  don't  you  button  up  your  cloak?' 
She  answered,  '  Don't  you  see  I'se  working  like  a  man,  and  mans  has 
their  coats  unbuttoned  ?' " 

The  collection  of  such  data  as  these  cannot  help  but  have  a 
most  excellent  effect  upon  teachers.  Their  attention  is  diverted 
from  abstract  themes  and  mystifying  discussions,  and  focused 
upon  the  concrete  child  as  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being 
in  the  average  school.  Indeed ,  the  best  result  of  this  sort  of  work 
is  the  effect  upon  the  teacher's  own  life  and  methods  of  instruc- 
tion, freshening  him  and  keeping  him  in  loving,  conscious  con- 
tact with  the  child  he  is  endeavoring  to  lead.  So  noticeable  has 
this  been  that  Principal  Russell  makes  the  statement  that  the 
"practice  of  child  study  is  directly  for  the  sake  of  the  teacher, 
indirectly  for  the  sake  of  the  child,  and  incidentally  for  the  sake  of 
science."  The  object  of  such  study  is  best  set  forth  in  the  official 
statement  sent  out  by  the  school  to  former  pupils  who  are 
now  engaged  in  teaching  work,  as  well  as  to  others  interested  in 
this  sort  of  investigation :  "  The  Principal  requests  the  students 
to  observe  the  conduct  of  children  in  all  circumstances  —  at 
home,  at  school,  in  the  street,  at  work,  at  play,  in  conversation 
with  one  another  and  with  adults— and  record  what  they  see  and 
hear  as  soon  as  circumstances  will  permit.  When  the  nature 
of  the  work  is  explained  to  the  school,  great  emphasis  is  placed 
upon  the  necessity  of  having  the  records  genuine  beyond  all  pos- 
sible question ;  of  having  them  consist  of  a  simple,  concise  state- 
ment of  what  the  child  actually  does  or  says,  without  comment 


CHILD-STUDY.  385 

by  the  writer;  of  making  both  the  observation  and  the  record 
without  the  knowledge  of  the  child;  and  of  noting  the  usual, 
rather  than  the  unusual,  conduct  of  the  individuals  observed. 
For  convenience  in  classification,  blanks  of  five  colors  are  pro- 
vided for  the  records.  White  paper  is  used  for  such  observations 
as  students  make  themselves;  red  for  well-attested  ones  reported 
by  others;  yellow  for  reminiscences  of  their  own  childhood;  green 
for  mention  of  whatever  they  read  on  the  subject;  and  chocolate 
for  observations  that  extend  continuously  over  a  period  of  time." 

About  15,000  such  reports  have  been  made,  and,  as  we  have  al- 
ready intimated,  among  them  are  recorded  many  interesting  and 
valuable  observations.  The  teacher  in  making  these  observations 
has  become  thoroughly  interested  in  the  varied  activities  of  the 
child.  As  Professor  Burnham  well  says,  "This  work  cannot  be 
commended  too  highly  as  a  means  of  bringing  the  young  teacher 
into  relations  of  interest  and  sympathy  with  children." 

We  must  now  allude  to  the  subject  of  measurement,  or  an- 
thropometry, as  applied  to  the  growing  child.  Professor  Bowditch, 
of  the  Harvard  Medical  School,  took  the  weight  and  height  of 
25,000  Boston  pupils.  He  found  that  until  the  age  of  eleven  or 
twelve,  boys  are  taller  and  heavier  than  girls.  The  girls  then  be- 
gin to  grow  more  rapidly  and  for  the  next  few  years  surpass  boys 
in  growth,  height  and  weight.  The  boys,  however,  soon  overtake 
and  surpass  them  and  thereafter  remain  taller  and  heavier.  It 
was  also  found  as  a  result  of  these  measurements  tha,t  children  of 
American  parents  are  taller  and  heavier  than  children  of  foreign 
parents,  and  Dr.  Bowditch  makes  the  practical  suggestion  that 
mental  effort  be  reduced  during  this  period  of  rapid  growth.  Dr. 
Peckham,  Superintendent  of  the  Milwaukee  City  Schools,  when 
Secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Health,  measured  10,000  Wiscon- 
sin children.  Among  other  conclusions  he  makes  the  following: 
The  growth  of  the  body  and  of  the  lower  extremities  takes  place 
in  such  a  way  that  the  strength  of  the  body  of  girls  is  less  than 
of  the  body  of  boys  until  the  tenth  year,  and  thereafter  greater 
until  the  sixteenth  year.  From  15  to  18  the  bodies  of  girls  grow 
only  two  inches  and  the  bodies  of  boys  over  four  inches.  Meas- 
fc.  p.— 25 


386  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

urements  much  more  complicated  than  these  have  been  devised 
by  Dr.  Franz  Boas,  who  has  made  accurate  statistics  from  meas- 
urements of  six  large  American  cities,  over  30,000  children  being 
measured  in  St.  Louis  alone.  These  results  were  presented  in 
graphic  form  at  the  Chicago  Exposition  in  the  Anthropological 
building,  and  are  now  being  published. 

In  1892,  Dr.  W.  Townsend  Porter  began  a  series  of  investi- 
gations upon  the  children  in  the  St.  Louis  schools,  with  a  view 
to  determining  whether  or  not  there  is  a  physical  basis  of 
precocity  and  dullness.  These  investigations  extended  over  a 
period  of  eleven  weeks,  and  included  measurements  of  weight, 
height,  length  and  breadth  of  the  head,  vital  capacity  of  the 
chest,  acuteness  of  vision,  and  many  others  — no  less  than 
33,500  boys  and  girls  being  examined  and  measured.  The 
great  store  of  facts  thus  secured  has  been  used  to  determine 
the  laws  of  the  normal  growth  of  St.  Louis  children,  in  the 
hope  that,  on  such  a  sound  basis,  there  may  be  established 
a  system  of  grading  which  may  take  into  account  the  physical 
capacity  of  the  pupil  in  the  assignment  of  school  tasks. 
Only  when  the  laws  of  growth  are  accurately  known,  is  it 
possible  to  decide  with  certainty  how  much  the  growth  of  an 
individual  exceeds  or  falls  below  the  normal  average;  and  with- 
out this  knowledge,  the  regulation  of  mental  labor,  from  a  phys- 
ical standpoint,  is  a  venturesome  groping  in  the  mist,  rather 
than  a  scientific  deduction.  Of  all  methods,  none  is  more  useful 
than  weighing;  partly  because  it  is  easy  to  weigh,  and  partly 
because  weight  has  a  more  intimate  relation  to  strength .  The 
weight,  in  fact,  may  be  looked  upon  as  an  indication  of  physical 
development.  By  weighing,  Dr.  Porter  sought  to  answer 
three  questions :  Are  there  dull  children,  who  are  in  the  main 
weaker;  and  precocious  children,  who  are  stronger  than  the  aver- 
age child  ?  Is  there  a  physical  basis  for  precocity  and  dullness? 
Is  mediocrity  of  the  mind  associated,  in  the  main,  with  medioc- 
rity of  physique?  All  of  these  questions,  as  results  of  his  thorough- 
going investigation,  are  answered  by  Dr.  Porter  in  the  affirm- 
ative. The  truth  which  the  investigations  exhibit  is  very  plain 


CHILD-STUDY.  387 

They  declare  in  unmistakable  words  that  precocious  children  are 
heavier,  and  dull  children  lighter  than  the  average  child  of  the 
same  age.  These  investigations  establish  a  physical  basis  of  pre- 
cocity and  dullness.  A  deduction  of  the  greatest  practical  im- 
portance is  made  from  the  laws  established  by  this  interesting 
piece  of  research  work :  No  child,  whose  weight  is  below  the  aver- 
age of  its  age,  should  be  permitted  to  enter  a  school  grade  beyond 
the  average  of  its  age,  except  after  such  a  physical  examination, 
as  shall  make  it  probable  that  the  child's  strength  shall  be  equal 
to  the  strain.  Incidentally,  it  was  also  shown  that  children  have 
too  many  hours  in  the  schoolroom,  especially  in  primary  grades. 
Three  hours  a  day  are  enough  for  pupils  in  the  first  three  grades. 
Three  morning  hours  in  the  schoolroom,  and  two  afternoon  hours 
spent  in  study,  would  greatly  enhance  the  quality  of  the  work  done. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  more  children  are  measured  in 
this  country  than  in  any  other,  but  it  is  not  being  carried  on  so 
well,  so  scientifically,  so  accurately  as  in  France  and  Germany; 
but  enough  in  the  way  of  results  has  been  secured  to  show  that 
each  part  of  the  body  has  its  own  nascent  periods  or  growing 
fits.  Growth  focuses  now  upon  one  set  of  organs  and  functions 
and  now  upon  another.  The  eye,  hand,  arm,  chest,  fingers  and 
other  organs  and  functions  each  have  nascent  periods,  during 
which  they  grow  far  more  than  for  a  long  time  before  or  after. 
Do  not  nag  a  child  with  methods  at  the  time  of  rapid  growth. 
Turn  him  loose,  permitting  him  in  a  measure  to  roam  at  will, 
following  his  most  natural  impulses,  assuming  as  few  trying  men- 
tal burdens  as  possible. 

Another  subject  of  investigation  that  will  be  most  fruitful  of 
results  is  the  study  of  fatigue.  Fatigue,  we  know,  arises  from 
over-exertion,  either  mental  or  physical.  It  varies  with  the  con- 
dition of  the  mind  and  body.  Thus  the  child  tires  sooner  when 
the  work  is  distasteful,  or  when  the  organs  are  unhealthy,  or 
when  the  body  is  poorly  nourished ;  and  the  body  is  also  wearied 
quicker  when  the  mind  is  tired,  and  the  mind  more  quickly  when 
the  body  is  tired.  For  the  conclusions  of  experimental  investi- 
gation into  the  subject  of  the  influence  of  bodily  fatigue  and  men- 


388  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tal  fatigue  upon  each  other,  I  need  only  refer  you  to  the  account 
on  page  43.  The  child  tires  more  readily  at  some  seasons  than 
at  others.  The  condition  of  the  atmosphere,  the  weather,  the  time 
of  day,  all  these  affect  the  normal  power  of  endurance.  Also  rapid 
growth,  as  already  intimated,  diminishes  one's  power  of  endur- 
ance. The  child  that  has  grown  up  too  quickly  tires  easily. 
One  of  the  early  effects  of  fatigue  is  in  the  difficulty  of  fixing  and 
holding  the  attention.  The  condition  of  the  strain  brought  upon 
the  will  in  compelling  the  attention  makes  work  fatiguing ;  the 
mind  being  thus  taxed,  a  conflict  between  what  it  feels  has  to  be 
done  and  a  preference  for  something  else  is  continually  going  on, 
and  this  strife  involves  a  worthless  expenditure  of  energy  and  a 
waste  of  time.  Fatigue  causes  the  mind  to  be  less  sensitive 
to  interest  or  novelty.  The  mind  of  the  tired  child  may  be 
active,  but  at  the  same  time  it  is  scattered  and  poorly  directed. 
The  great  curse  of  this  age  is  the  demand  for  rapid  education.  In 
the  hurry  to  go  through  college  and  complete  a  university  course, 
many  a  person  is  sacrificing  the  very  thing  for  which  they  seek, 
namely,  the  power  to  think  and  do.  Certainly  the  results  that 
ensue  in  consequence  of  over-pressure  in  the  town  and  city  schools 
are  criminal.  Superintendents,  teachers  and  parents  push  and 
crowd  the  children  through  a  long,  hard  year's  work.  Health  is 
sacrificed  for  promotion,  and  the  joyous,  buoyant  child  is  bur- 
dened with  unnatural  demands  until  such  a  thing  as  natural 
mental  spontaneity  is  unknown.  What  is  learned  when  a  child  is 
fatigued  is  soon  lost,  the  mind's  forces  being  easily  dissipated. 
Vital  force  is  required  faster  than  it  is  generated.  The  work  done 
to-day  is  done  on  to-morrow's  credit,  and  the  system  of  the  child 
is  wholly  at  a  loss  to  protect  itself  against  disease  and  accident. 
Some  physicians  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  most  diseases  have  their 
genesis  in  fatigue.  There  is  no  doubt  that  constant  tension  kills 
not  only  joy,  but  growth.  When  work  is  performed  by  a  fatigued 
mind  and  tired  brain,  bad  mental  habits  cannot  help  being  formed. 
Continual  over-pressure  in  childhood  certainly  means  weakened 
possibilities  in  adult  life.  Whatever  filters  through  the  mind  of 
the  tired  child  must,  of  course,  receive  thereby  a  coloring.  Every 


CHILD-STUDY.  389 

one  of  our  thoughts,  all  of  our  actions,  our  plans,  our  hopes,  our 
ambitions  and  aims  are  conditioned  by  our  moods,  and  these 
moods  are  directly  dependent  upon  bodily  feeling.  The  great 
demand  of  the  age  is  that  we  find  and  establish  a  science  of 
resting. 

Dr.  Burnham  of  Clark  University  has  classified  the  study 
of  children  under  two  great  heads,  (a)  Anthropological  studies, 
and  (b)  Psychological  studies.  Under  the  first  must  be  included 
the  investigations  in  regard  to  growth  and  health  of  school  chil- 
dren, such  as  those  of  Bowditch,  Porter  and  Peckham  already  re- 
ferred to.  The  Psychological  studies  fall  into  three  subdivisions : 
first,  the  study  of  sensations;  second,  the  study  of  the  higher 
intellectual  processes ;  and  third,  the  study  of  themotor  lifeof  the 
child.  In  the  sensory  field  the  child's  power  of  vision,  hearing, 
tasting,  and  smelling  should  be  accurately  tested.  The  most 
thorough-going  investigation  has  probably  been  made  upon  the 
sense  of  hearing.  As  a  result  of  the  practical  investigations  in 
this  line,  Dr.  Barr  gives  several  very  good  suggestions,  of  which 
we  have  space  for  but  four : 

1.  Teachers  should  keep  in  view  the  fact  that  in  every  class  of 
fifty  children,  there  are  probably  a  dozen  or  more  of  them  who 
have  some  defect  of  hearing,  and  who  are,  therefore,  placed  at  a 
disadvantage  as  compared  with  their  normally  hearing  fellows. 

2.  Children  whose  hearing  is  very  defective,  or  who  are  totally 
deaf,  should  be  taught  in  a  separate  class  by  the  German  method 
of  articulate  speech  and  lip  reading. 

3.  In  the  case  of  children  whose  progress  is  unsatisfactory,  and 
who  are  inattentive,  dull  and  idle,  their  capacity  of  hearing 
should  be  determined  by  proper  tests,  and  if  defective  hearing  is 
found,  information  of  the  fact  should  be  sent  to  the  parents,  and 
their  position  in  the  class  so  arranged  as  to  minimize  the  bad 
effects  of  the  defective  hearing. 

4.  The  class  room  should  never  exceed  twenty  feet  in  length  or 
breadth,  or  better,  a  parallelogram  of  25x15  feet.    The  teacher 
should  be  at  the  middle  of  one  of  the  short  sides  of  the  parallelo- 
gram, and  the  number  of  scholars  in  one  room  should  never  ex- 


390  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ceed  fifty.  If,  as  is  frequently  the  case,  the  teacher  stands  in  the 
center  of  the  long  side  of  a  parallelogram,  the  children  to  the 
extreme  right  and  left  are  badly  situated  for  hearing. 

The  study  of  intellectual  processes  would  include  the  investi- 
gation of  their  power  of  memory,  imagination,  reasoning  and 
the  like.  Without  question  the  best  piece  of  work  that  has  been 
done  in  this  line  is  the  study  of  memory  made  by  Mr.  Bolton  of 
Clark  University,  upon  children  in  the  Worcester  schools.* 

In  the  motor  field  are  included  all  the  studies  of  children's 
languages,  their  plays,  manual  work,  kindergarten  occupations, 
the  development  of  voluntary  control  over  their  motions.  The 
most  systematic  study  yet  made  of  motor  ability  is  that  pub- 
lished by  Professor  W.  L.  Bryan.  He  found  that  the  modifica- 
tions induced  by  fatigue  are  greater  than  improvements  due  to 
age ;  that  a  child  of  sixteen,  e.  g. ,  could  tap  with  the  pencil  five 
times  as  fast  as  the  child  of  six ;  that  the  rate  of  such  motion  de- 
clined at  the  age  of  fourteen  in  boys,  and  at  thirteen  in  girls ;  but 
was  preceded  in  both  by  a  rapid  and  followed  by  a  less  rapid 
increase. 

It  is  a  source  of  deep  regret  that  the  average  teacher  addresses 
himself  to  the  stupid  rather  than  to  the  bright  pupils  of  the  class. 
In  our  traditional  methods  we  are  accountable  for  great  mental 
waste,  in  that  we  retard  and  stunt  the  bright  child  in  order  to 
keep  pace  with  the  slow  one.  It  is  possible  to  advance  the  brighter 
half  faster  than  we  do.  It  can  and  should  be  done.  In  Paris  a 
few  years  ago,  eighteen  average  boys  were  selected  and  a  number 
of  average  teachers  chosen  to  guide  them  in  their  studies.  These 
teachers  said :  "Let  us  do  the  best  thing  possible  for  these  boys. 
Let  us  help  them  the  most  we  can."  As  a  result  of  their  pains- 
taking efforts  these  boys  went  through  the  six  years  of  the 
Lyceein  two  and  one-half  years,  without  the  slightest  trace  of 
physical  impairment.  If  we  have  learned  that  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  mental  waste,  we  should  remember,  too,  that  there  are 
also  certain  great  principles  of  mental  economy. 

We  should  reconstruct  all  on  the  basis  of  the  child.  The  living, 

*" American  Journal  of  Psychology,"  April,  1892, 


CHILD-STUDY.  391 

playing,  romping,  rollicking  child  embodies  a  truly  elementary 
Psychology,  and  every  great  educational  reformer  who  has 
spoken  authoritatively,  has  been  a  person  who  lived  for  years  in 
closest  touch  with  children.  Teachers,  as  a  rule,  fail  to  study  the 
nature  of  the  child  in  a  thorough-going  way,  for  no  less  than 
three  reasons :  (a)  They  regard  it  their  business  to  impart  in- 
struction, or  infuse  information,  rather  than  to  "e-ducate"  or  un- 
fold, (b)  They  are  conceited  enough  to  think  that  theyhavesuffi- 
cient  knowledge  of  childhood  in  their  own  remembered  experiences 
of  their  early  years,  forgetting  that  these  few  tattered,  musty 
remnants  are  incidental  rather  than  characteristic,  (c)  Many 
think  a  text-book  on  Psychology  supplies  the  need.  This  is  the 
gravest  mistake  a  teacher  can  possibly  make. 

In  the  discussion  of  the  value  of  different  studies,  take  for  ex- 
ample, the  controversy  that  has  so  long  been  waged  between 
those  who  believe  that  Greek  and  Latin  should  be  retained  in  the 
curriculum,  and  those  who  do  not.  Has  this  momentous  ques- 
tion ever  been  discussed  on  the  basis  of  the  real  nature  of  the 
child?  If  we  take  the  point  of  view  of  those  who  indorse  the 
study  of  the  ancient  languages,  what  a  waste  of  time  and  educa- 
tive power  there  is  for  the  modern  courses  of  study,  which  draw 
at  least  three-fourths  of  the  pupils  in  the  public  schools  of  this 
great  national  commonwealth !  Onthe  other  hand,  if  we  take  the 
opposite  view-point,  we  find  ourselves  raising  a  hue  and  cry  over 
the  waste  of  time  and  opportunity  going  on  in  colleges  and  pre- 
paratory schools  over  dead  languages,  no  longer  of  practical 
use.  The  ringing  words  of  our  wide-awake  Commissioner  of  Edu- 
cation, Dr.  William  T.  Harris,  should  be  heeded  by  all  interested 
in  curriculum-making :  "  It  is  indeed  high  time  that  the  collective 
mind  of  the  fraternity  of  educators  should  be  turned  to  the  sub- 
ject of  educational  values."* 


*"  Educational  Review,"  January,  1894. 


APPENDIX. 

THE  KINDERGARTEN  AND  CHILD  DEVELOPMENT. 

[The  following  chapter  was  written  by  Miss  Kate  Gary,  the  director  of 
the  kindergarten  at  Champaign,  Illinois,  the  seat  of  the  State  University. 
Miss  Gary  was  one  of  those  in  charge  of  the  Model  Kindergarten  in  the 
Illinois  Building  at  the  World's  Fair  from  May  to  August.  That  she  is 
not  only  a  successful  kindergartner,  but  a  keen  psychological  student  as 
well,  is  clearly  shown  by  the  context  of  this  article,  for  which  the  author 
is  under  great  obligations.] 

FBCEBEL  based  education  on  unity.  He  desired  to  show  the 
child  the  world  as  a  whole  and  to  see  himself  as  a  part  of  that 
great  whole.  Living  in  perfect  harmony  with  all  things,  subor- 
dinating himself  to  the  welfare  of  his  fellow-men,  to  see  law  in 
nature,  in  spirit,  and  in  man  who  connects  both. 

And  this  he  would  have  developed  through  self-activity  in  the 
child,  not  meaning  that  the  child  shall  learn  only  by  what  he 
does  himself,  but  that  his  whole  self,  every  phase  of  his  being, 
shall  be  active  and  alive  in  receiving  and  giving. 

And  to  carry  out  this  all-sided  development  of  head,  heart  and 
hand,  he  has  given  us  games,  songs,  gifts  and  occupations  to 
awaken  every  faculty  of  the  child,  and  through  the  medium  oi 
play,  connect  the  unknown  with  the  known.  And  it  is  this  spirit 
of  play  in  the  kindergarten  that  has  caused  the  unthinking  mind 
to  call  it  a  good  place  of  amusement  for  children,  only  admitting 
its  true  value  in  cases  where  children  have  little  or  no  training  at 
home. 

That  it  is  a  good  thing  for  the  poor,  neglected  child  of  the. 
streets  I  gladly  agree ;  but  is  it  not  true  that  the  child  of  wealth, 
allowed  only  the  freedom  of  the  nursery's  four  walls,  is  quite  as 
much  to  be  pitied  as  the  less-cared-f or  child  of  poverty  ? 

Go  from  a  kindergarten  of  waifs  into  one  of  more  fortunately 
(392) 


APPENDIX.  393 

born  children,  and  see  the  marked  difference  in  self-denial  and  gen- 
erous thought  for  others,  and  then  say  that  the  little  ones  of 
wealthy  parents  do  not  need  the  development  of  the  kindergarten. 

I  care  not  whether  a  child  comes  from  a  home  of  love  or  neg- 
lect, it  is  the  atmosphere  of  sympathy  in  the  kindergarten  that 
opens  his  heart  and  helps  him  to  display  the  true  nature.  Here 
it  is  that  he  meets  children  of  different  homes,  of  different  types, 
having  various  characteristics,  making  for  him  a  community  in 
which  all  hold  equal  rights.  It  is  where  he  first  learns  law — law 
according  to  his  age.  All  our  children,  rich  or  poor,  high  or  low, 
fall  under  the  same  group  of  mental  and  moral  laws.  Nature 
made  only  one  set  of  educational  laws,  as  she  made  only  one  kind 
of  sunshine.  It  is  a  place  of  experiences,  where  he  gets  the  presen- 
timent of  the  life  that  lies  before  him.  The  kindergarten  is  his, 
he  feels  the  importance  and  responsibility  which  give  him  the 
self-respect  necessary  to  growth  of  character. 

It  is  not  only  that  the  mother's  time  is  occupied  with  house- 
hold cares,  social  duties  and  the  physical  needs  of  her  child;  the 
mother  at  home  with  one,  two,  or  perhaps  three  children  though 
she  be  born  and  bred  a  kindergartner,  cannot  do  for  them  what 
the  kindergarten  can  with  its  twenty -five.  I  would  not  have  the 
home  life  left  outside  the  kindergarten  door,  nor  the  kindergar- 
ten life  left  inside;  they  should  be  parts  of  the  great  whole,  one 
strengthening  the  other,  and  experience  shows  this  to  be  true. 

Watch  a  few  carefully  reared  children  enter  a  kindergarten  in 
October,  and  follow  them  until  June  and  see  the  change,  if  the 
kindergarten  be  a  true  one,  and  I  would  speak  of  no  other.  The 
selfish,  peevish  child  has  been  led  to  submit  to  the  other  twenty; 
the  self-conscious  child  is  made  unconscious,  the  weak  becomes 
stronger,  and  all  have  learned  to  obey  the  laws  set  for  them,  and 
are  made  more  capable  of  filling  their  places  in  the  larger  world. 
One  by  one  come  to  their  little  minds  the  principles  of  love,  justice 
and  beauty,  and  they  are  made  free.  Its  reaction  in  the  poor 
districts  is  of  course  much  greater.  It  not  only  affects  the  child 
and  family,  but  the  entire  neighborhood.  I  have  seen  some  of 
the  hardest  eyes  soften  as  they  watched  the  happy  babes  at 


394  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

work,  and  eyes,  where  tears  had  long  since  ceased  to  flow,  moisten 
at  the  song, of  forty  or  fifty  little  ones  seated  about  the  circle.  And 
the  kindergarten  window  filled  with  plants  will  catch  the  eye  of 
every  passer-by  and  allure  the  lowest  to  stop  for  a  minute.  The 
mothers  tell  us  they  can  no  longer  use  harsh  words  since  the 
kindergartner  does  not. 

The  visits  of  the  kindergartner  bring  great  pleasure  and  pride 
to  the  parents,  and  I  have  been  into  rooms  where  the  only  orna- 
ments were  the  well-preserved  work  of  the  child  at  kindergarten. 
The  marked  condition  of  improvement  shown  each  year  in  the 
children's  body  and  clothes  tell  that  the  kindergarten  has  crept 
into  the  homes  to  stay. 

The  deepest  truths  of  humanity  are  revealed  in  the  methods  of 
the  kindergarten.  Froebel  saw  in  each  child  all  of  the  germs  of 
the  coming  man.  He  saw  that  the  development  of  each  individ- 
ual depended  upon  a  law,  the  law  of  continuity,  each  succeeding 
phase  arising  from  a  preceding  one  and  depending  upon  it.  He 
saw  that  everywhere  in  nature,  life  and  growth  seemed  to  be  a 
gradual  change  from  a  lower  state  to  a  higher  with  no  breaks; 
and  he  saw,  too,  that  every  thing  in  nature  had  its  own  individual 
method  of  development,  and  to  force  it  this  way  or  that  would 
either  hurt  or  kill,  but  to  wisely  prune  brought  perfection.  And 
so  with  the  child  who  manifests  characteristics  as  many  and  varied 
as  his  physical  ailments,  each  one  is  worthy  of  being  recog- 
nized and  given  fair  play.  And  this  can  be  accomplished  only  by 
the  freedom  allowed  in  the  kindergarten.  He  would  have  us 
lead  the  child  into  a  happy,  receptive  mood  and  then  let  him  re- 
ceive, for  when  the  ground  is  ready,  seeds  of  all  kinds  easily  ger- 
minate, in  obedience  to  rules.  Love  and  harmony  will  be  expressed, 
because  felt.  Upon  asking  a  University  girl,  who  was  fortunate 
in  having  had  both  home  and  kindergarten  training,  what  made 
the  most  lasting  impression  upon  her,  she  said  that  the  beautiful, 
harmonious  atmosphere  which  pervaded  the  kindergarten  room 
could  never  be  effaced  from  her  memory. 

With  children,  awakening  and  cultivating  the  love  of  the  beau- 
tiful furnishes  a  better  ethical  basis  than  moralizing.  The  story 


APPENDIX.  395 

with  a  deep  hidden  meaning  is  felt  without  the  tacking  on  of  the 
moral.  One  of  the  apparently  worst  of  boys  that  I  ever  saw  would 
stand  morning  after  morning  in  deep  thought  before  a  picture  of 
the  Mother  and  Child  on  the  kindergarten  wall,  conscious  for  the 
time  of  nothing  else  about  him,  and  over  his  face  would  come  a 
most  beautiful  smile,  only  to  end  in  some  low  word  when  he  found 
the  eyes  of  another  child  upon  him.  One  morning  his  eyes  were 
caught  by  the  picture  of  Raphael's  Cherubs,  and  he  whispered  to 
his  brother,  "Roy,  I  see  angels,  one's  looking  at  me  and  one 
aint."  From  that  time  a  new  life  sprang  up  within  him,  which 
slowly  but  surely  strengthened,  and  he  left  the  kindergarten  a  dif- 
ferent child,  a  marvel  to  his  parents  and  neighbors. 

The  desire  of  the  kindergartner  is  to  find  the  good,  strengthen 
and  develop  it  by  self-activity,  and  let  the  bad  fade  away,  dying 
of  atrophy;  not  keeping  the  child  always  out  of  harm's  way,  but 
getting  the  love  of  right  deeply  rooted.  Then  wrong  may  come, 
the  child  is  safe. 

Forms  of  beauty  are  used  to  cultivate  the  taste  for  the 
beautiful.  Color  is  taught  to  cultivate  observation,  to  develop, 
strengthen  and  purify  the  life  of  the  child  by  lifting  him  out  of 
himself  and  leading  him  to  see  and  feel  beauty  in  nature  and  art, 
and  to  strive  after  that  which  is  high  and  noble.  The  greatest 
task  of  our  times  is  that  of  giving  each  young  person  a  first  im- 
pulse toward  the  world  of  truth,  beauty  and  right;  but  these 
will  be  nothing  to  the  child  until  it  has  learned  to  love  something. 
Froebel  saw  this  and  so  he  said,  take  the  child  at  the  symbolic 
age  of  three  years,  and  give  it  a  chance  to  play  with  forms,  tasks 
and  ideas  which  are  symbols  of  the  utility  and  beauty  to  be  met 
with  in  after  life. 

And  so  the  kindergarten  meets  the  child  on  its  own  ground— 
the  ground  of  play.  And  it  is  this  freedom  of  play  and  self-activ- 
ity that  gives  the  kindergartner  insight  into  the  child's  inner  na- 
ture and  affords  her  the  opportunity  of  seeing  in  what  the  child 
is  weak.  Under  this  head  of  play  would  come  the  presenting  of  new 
thoughts  in  an  attractive  manner,  the  value  of  which  is  so  forci- 
bly illustrated  in  the  kindergarten.  For  example,  the  fall  thought 


396  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  the  seeds,  so  wonderfully  cared  for  by  Mother  Nature,  pre- 
sented by  a,  simple  truth,  clothed  in  an  attractive  manner  and 
connecting  the  thought  with  the  child's  own  life  and  experience, 
will  arouse  the  most  intense  interest.  Little  "  seed  cradles  "  and 
1  'treasure  boxes"  will  be  brought  to  kindergarten  as  long  as 
King  Winter  leaves  any  uncovered  — some  such  tiny  treasures, 
that  an  older  person  would  discover  them  with  difficulty,  which 
show  how  the  eyes  of  the  child  have  been  opened  to  the  beauties 
growing  by  the  wayside.  And  when  spring  comes,  what  bound- 
less pleasure  is  expressed  in  taking  off  the  coat  of  the  soaked  pea 
or  bean  and  finding  the  baby  inside  so  carefully  provided  for — 
plenty  of  food  and  warmth  to  keep  it  alive  until  it  is  time  to  ba> 
born.  In  presenting  the  thought  in  this  way,  the  child  sees  the  life 
about  him,  not  as  a  separate  thing,  but  as  a  part  of  the  great 
whole  of  which  he  is  but  another  phase. 

I  once  saw  a  kindergartner  take  up  a  pot  of  earth  in  which  was 
growing  clover— the  seeds  having  been  planted  by  the  children 
some  days  before  — and  calling  one  of  the  children  to  her,  asked 
him  to  pull  up  a  few  of  the  little  plants,  for  they  were  growing  too 
thickly.  In-  response,  his  hands  crept  back  of  him  and  were 
tightly  clasped,  while  his  head  shook  120;  and  in  wonderment  he 
looked  up  into  the  face  of  the  kindergartner,  whom  he  wanted  to 
please,  every  feature  asking  how  she  could  expect  him  to  do  a 
thing  so  cruel  to  a  little  life  he  had  helped  give  birth,  and  care- 
fully tended  for  days.  Need  we  fear  for  that  child's  future? 
How  the  child's  spiritual  eyes  are  being  trained  as  .he  searches 
on  his  way  to  kindergarten,  to  see  what  nature  has  that  will 
give  pleasure  to  the  other  children.  The  song  of  "Come,  Lit- 
tle Leaves,"  will  fill  the  room  in  a  short  time  with  leaves  wearing 
the  most  gorgeous  dresses  of  red,  gold,  or  brown,  like  "  Mary's 
dress  "  or  "  Joe's  tie."  It  is  a  happy  morning  when  one  boy  who 
has  needed  an  extra  amount  of  sympathy  in  lessons  of  nature, 
calls  out  that  he  "  didn't  know  leaves  growed  so  nice." 

A  mother  was  heard  to  complain  because  that  "foolish  kinder- 
garten did  nothing  bat  teach  her  child  to  hunt  flowers  and  leaves, 
and  when  she  took  him  out  for  a  walk,  he  was  so  intent  upon 


APPENDIX.  397 

finding  new  colors  and  forms  that  he  did  not  <  keep  up.'"  Oh, 
mothers !  let  your  children'lag  behind  in  the  walk,  but  not  alone. 
Give  them  your  sympathy,  for  they  are  advancing  in  a  much 
more  important  walk,  than  the  one  they  started  out  to  take. 

Besides  the  deep  impression  made  upon  the  mind  by  a  thought 
presented  in  a  pleasing  manner,  an  infinite  amount  of  time  is  saved . 
In  visiting  a  primary  school  I  saw  the  teacher  trying  to  make 
children  of  eight  and  nine  years  realize  that  blue  and  yellow  mixed 
produce  green,  by  merely  telling  them  the  fact— the  words  went  in 
one  ear  and  out  of  the  other,  as  I  found  upon  questioning  the  next 
day.  The  child  in  the  kindergarten  is  given  a  little  yellow  paint, 
and  a  little  blue,  and  is  told  nothing.  He  mixes  them,  and  after 
many  exclamations  paints  his  leaf—  the  fact  has  come  to  stay. 

Objects  talked  about  in  the  kindergarten  are  examined  indi- 
vidually, each  child  thinking  and  expressing  thoughts  for  him- 
self, and  this  disposition  to  attack  and  wrestle  with  a  thing— 
which  I  am  told  is  a  marked  characteristic  of  the  kindergarten  child 
when  he  enters  school  — is  strengthened  by  making  the  child  first, 
keeping  it  in  the  foreground,  and  the  director  in  the  back ;  this 
makes  the  child  think  his  own  way  and  develops  him  by  means 
of  his  own  activities.  The  great  need  of  the  child  is  for  him  to 
be  led  to  work  by  himself,  with  skillful  guidance,  and  wise  encour- 
agement and  recognition  of  his  efforts.  The  school  teacher  often 
complains  of  the  child's  "tiresome  why,"  and  desire  for  recogni- 
tion for  his  well-doing.  Is  not  the  first  his  right,  which  ought 
never  to  be  killed?  And  as  to  the  latter,  do  we  not  ourselves  all 
feel  the  need  of  recognition  of  some  sort  in  return  for  a  great 
effort  made?  The  true  kindergartner  only  gives  her  smile  or  nod 
when  the  effort  has  cost  the  child  something. 

The  object  lessons  in  the  kindergarten  do  not  stand  merely  for 
the  study  of  things,  but  for  the  thought  back  of  the  thing.  The 
seed  is  not  examined  for  the  sake  of  that  one  seed,  but  to  show 
the  care  of  Nature  and  to  lead  the  child  to  see  all  the  great  work 
done  by  her  careful,  loving  hand.  So  with  the  squirrel  that  gives 
the  child  so  much  pleasure ;  it  is  not  simply  this  little  four-legged 
animal  that  lives  on  nuts  and  makes  his  home  in  the  trees,  but 


398  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

the  thought  of  an  industrious  fellow,  storing  up  food  for  the 
winter,  always  busy,  never  idle,  heuce  happy.  And  so  in  color 
the  child  is  not  taught  that  the  apple  is  red,  or  lemon  yellow, 
only  as  belonging  to  the  apple  and  lemon,  but  to  open  his  eyes  to 
all  color  and  to  universalize  it. 

The  games  in  the  kindergarten  play  an  important  part,  we 
might  almost  say  the  important,  if  there  were  any  one  part  of 
more  consequence  than  another.  Excepting  the  child,  they  consti- 
tute the  important  feature  of  the  kindergarten.  Through  the 
the  games  muscles  of  the  body  are  brought  into  play,  and  by  de- 
veloping muscular  force  the  will  is  strengthened ;  and  grace  and 
beauty  of  mind  and  spirit  increase  in  proportion  to  physical  grace. 
For  we  know  it  is  one  of  the  demonstrated  truths  in  modern  Psy- 
chology that  body  and  mind  are  under  reciprocal  relations — that 
body  acts  on  mind  and  mind  acts  on  body.  Every  mental  act 
leaves  its  impress  upon  the  physical  organism,  and  every  bodily 
modification  in  turn  affects  the  mind  in  its  activity,  growth  and 
development.  In  these  games,  so  simple  to  the  casual  observer, 
the  child  is  developing  gentleness,  self-sacrifice,  self-reliance, 
promptness,  courtesy,  freedom  of  thought  and  action.  And  these 
same  games  bring  the  children  into  close  union,  and  develop  a 
mutual  dependence  and  sympathy;  they  foreshadow  and  present 
great  truths.  The  various  family  relations,  duties  and  moral 
virtues  are  strongly  inculcated.  In  what  way  can  a  deeper  love 
for,  and  clearer  mental  picture  of  the  birds  and  animals  be  ob- 
tained than  by  the  child's  representing  them  in  the  games  at  the 
circle?  The  many  trade  games  reproduced  in  the  kindergarten 
tend  to  quicken  the  child's  sympathy  with  his  fellow-men. 

Then  comes  state  life,  with  George  Washington  as  a  type  of 
strength  and  beauty.  How  can  a  stronger  lesson  in  patriotism 
be  imparted  than  by  making  the  child  acquainted  with  the  flag? 
As  he  bears  this  emblem  of  his  country  in  the  marches  he  is  insen- 
sibly being  trained  for  patriotic  service.  One  is  interested  to 
know  that  in  New  York  City  at  certain  schools  one  of  the  first 
lessons  taught  the  young  children  of  the  foreigners  is  to  respect 
the  flag  of  the  United  States.  Accordingly  they  salute  it  at  the 


APPENDIX.  399 

beginning  of  each  day's  work.  This,  accompanied  by  right  teach- 
ing, will  result  in  stronger  love  for  country. 

Following  the  state  life  is  the  church  life,  and  spring,  symbolic 
of  life  and  resurrection,  is  developed  by  the  child  representing  in 
his  own  way  the  seed  and  its  growth,  the  worm  and  its  awaken- 
ing into  a  butterfly,  and  the  returning  of  the  migratory  birds. 
Sharing  the  life  of  nature  and  of  man,  the  child  feels  himself  one 
with  both. 

The  sense  games  serve  an  important  function  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  child.  His  senses  become  wonderfully  sharp  and 
acute  by  means  of  the  exercises  accompanied  by  bright,  attract- 
ive words  set  to  good  music.  They  give  him  endless  pleasure 
and  help  him  to  express  in  definite  terms  the  impressions  made. 
Allowing  the  child  to  glance  for  a  minute  at  a  collection  of  ob- 
jects and  then  letting  him  tell  what  he  has  seen,  strengthens 
memory  as  well  as  sight;  looking  at  a  picture  in  the  same  way; 
guessing  which  child  has  left  the  ring ;  giving  them  mild  contrasts 
in  smell  and  taste  (mild  that  these  easily  fatigued  senses  may 
not  become  overtaxed);  objects  to  feel  of;  kinds  and  direction  of 
sound ;  finding  things  to  loud  and  soft  music,  or  telling  a  play- 
mate by  his  voice  or  step— in  such  ways  the  little  ears  are  trained 
to  hear  and  the  eyes  to  see  much  more  quickly  and  accurately  than 
our  dull,  untrained  senses.  And  this  habit  of  contrasting  smell, 
taste  and  sound  will  not  end  with  material  things,  but  be  carried 
on  into  higher  contrasts.  Judicious  direction  in  these  sense  games, 
as  in  all  else  in  the  kindergarten,  must  be  exercised.  If  played 
too  long  the  child  becomes  tired,  and  inattention  and  dissipation 
of  the  mental  forces  will  result.  The  games  of  contrast,  of  smell, 
taste  and  sound  are  illustrated  in  the  gifts  by  contrasts  of  color, 
form,  size,  number,  relation,  direction  and  position.  Their 
purpose  is  to  foreshadow  and  prepare  the  way  for  truth,  to 
present  striking  contrasts,  to  acquaint  the  child  with  normal 
types  and  to  develop  creative  activity.  By  means  of  the  gifts 
the  child  is  led  to  analyze,  abstract,  compare,  and  classify,  of 
course  unconsciously  and  through  play.  In  them  Froebel  has 
met  every  desire  of  the  child.  Beginning  with  the  ball  from  its  sim- 


400  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

plicity  and  unity,  be  leads  out  to  the  sphere,  cube  and  cylinder, 
which  stan$  as  types  of  the  animal,  vegetable  and  mineral  king- 
doms, offering  contrasts  of  form.  From  this  he  goes  to  the  di- 
vided cube,  which  meets  two  strong  tendencies  of  the  child,  to  in- 
vestigate and  reconstruct.  The  first  divided  cube  presents  con- 
trasts in  size,  the  second  contrasts  in  division,  the  third  contrasts 
of  angles,  and  the  fourth  repeats  and  emphasizes  the  contrasts 
of  the  preceding  gifts. 

The  significance  of  these  divided  units  lies  in  the  relationship 
of  parts  to  each  other  and  to  the  whole.  Their  essential  object 
is  to  develop  the  constructing  powers  of  the  child,  thus  counter- 
acting the  destructive  tendencies  which  would  develop  unduly 
were  investigation  alone  provided  for.  They  offer  illustrations  of 
fractional  parts;  halves,  fourths,  and  eighths  become  clear  with  the 
right  use  of  the  cube  divided  into  eight  smaller  cubes  and  those 
divided  into  eight  oblongs,  while  the  cubes  of  the  fifth  and  sixth 
gifts  by  their  larger  number  of  divisions  illustrate  thirds  and 
ninths,  also  halves,  quarters,  sixths,  twelfths,  and  twenty-sev- 
enths. With  the  tablets  more  subtle  contrasts  in  form  are  pre- 
sented. By  means  of  sticks  of  various  lengths  any  number  of 
exercises  may  be  given  in  counting,  adding,  multiplying  and 
subtracting.  A  little  fellow  once  replied  to  his  kindergartner, 
who  said  she  didn't  suppose  he  could  count  four,  "I  didn't,  I 
seed  two  sticks  and  two  sticks  and  I  thinked  four."  All  of  thess. 
exercises  are  done  through  play,  at  first  to  arouse  interest  in  the 
relations  of  numbers;  later,  mechanical  drill  may  be  given  with 
great  delight  to  the  child. 

The  child  gets  the  rudiments  of  geometry  in  making  the  differ- 
ent forms  with  his  gifts,  connecting  them  at  first  with  some 
familiar  object— searching  for  them  about  the  room,  out  of 
doors,  at  home,  and  when  quite  familiar  with  a  form  is  told  its 
name.  For  example,  the  honey-comb  is  examined,  then  repre- 
sented with  the  fifth  gift,  tablets  and  sticks,  sewn  on  card-board, 
drawn  and  painted  until  the  child  has  a  good  mental  picture  of 
it  and  can  tell  in  good  language  how  he  made  it  and  of  wha,t  it  is 
composed.  The  gifts  are  a  "  key  to  the  inner  world  and  a  door  to 


APPENDIX.  401 

the  outer."  "What  a  child  has  taken  in  he gi ves back  to  the  world 
through  his  fingers  by  means  of  the  gifts,  before  he  is  capable  of 
expressing  in  words.  The  child  must  know  the  things  that  words 
describe  before  he  can  give  expression  to  them. 

The  contrast  of  color,  form,  size,  number,  etc.,  illustrated  in 
the  gifts,  are  applied  in  the  occupations  —  which  are  more  or  less 
imitative  at  first,  for  the  child  must  be  master  of  his  material 
before  he  can  use  it  as  a  means  of  expression ;  but  just  as  soon 
as  he  is  strong  enough,  he  is  given  material  to  carry  out  in  his 
own  individual  way,  impressions  made  by  the  gifts.  And  that  is 
why  clay  and  sand  are  so  valuable  to  the  child ;  he  feels  himself 
master  of  that  pliable  material  from  the  start,  and  finds  delight 
in  producing  a  mental  picture  in  the  clay  every  time  he  is  given 
a  chance.  And  the  products  are  often  so  full  of  life  that  you  mar- 
vel at  the  clear  thought  of  the  child.  He  absorbs  from  the  occupa- 
tions, principles  of  industrial  and  art  education;  he  sees  propor- 
tion and  harmony  of  colors,  and  learns  to  look  for  them  in  all 
that  surrounds  him. 

No  bent  bodies  are  allowed,  the  fingers  become  more  skillful. 
In  the  gifts  and  occupations  the  ability  to  use  both  the  right  and 
left  hand  is  developed.  The  desire  for  neatness,  order  and  accu- 
racy is  strengthened  and  no  careless  work  is  accepted. 

The  quiet,  orderly  way  of  working  with  the  gifts  and  occupa- 
tions assists  in  quiet,  orderly  thinking.  Doing  truth  with  the 
fingers  will  help  the  child  to  act  and  feel  truth  in  his  soul.  This 
continuity  of  thought  in  story,  song,  game,  gift  and  occupa- 
tion in  the  kindergarten,  strengthens  the  child's  powers  of 
concentration.  His  interest  is  aroused  at  the  opening  circle, 
and  each  game,  each  task,  and  each  thought,  bears  upon  the 
topic  for  the  day  or  week.  The  dictation  in  the  gifts  and  occupa- 
tions carrying  on  the  thought  of  the  day  is  simple  and  within 
the  child's  power,  and  teaches  him  to  hear.  It  is  amazing  to  see 
the  stupidity  with  which  young  ladies  in  the  training  class  take 
such  dictation  as  that  given  young  children.  The  child's  interest 
grows  deeper  with  each  effort  made,  and  he  falls  quietly  and  hap- 
pily to  work.  The  material  used  in  carrying  out  a  thought  ie  so 
26 


4  02  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSJCBOLOi 

varied  -each  day  Ixang  different —that  thechild  doesnot  become 
fatigued,  and  in  the  use  of  the  gifts  he  is  never  allowed  to  tiro  of 
them;  he  is  given  dictation  fifteen  minutes,  and  is  allowed  free 
plaj  for  the  same  length  of  time,  so  that  each  week  the  child  wet- 
comes  the  gifts  as  he  would  a  new  toy. 

Statistics  show  that  this  concentration  of  thought  is  not 
dropped  in  the  kindergarten,  but  follows  thechild  in  all  his  future 
work.  The  kindergarten  children  are  said  by  school  teachers  <  *  to 
know  how  to  talk."  This  is  simply  because  they  have  been  allowed 
free  expression  of  all  the  impressions  made,  under  the  careful  guid- 
ance of  the  kindergartner.  The  child  who  enters  the  primary 
school  from  the  kindergarten,  is  said  by  the  majority  of  teachers 
to  have  greater  power  of  attention,  is  more  obedient  to  the  rules, 
school  life  not  being  so  new  as  to  a  child  fresh  from  home;  and  the 
bashfulness  which  keeps  some  children  months  from  learning,  and 
cannot  claim  from  the  busy  school  teacher  the  attention  neces- 
sary to  help  the  child,  is  ontiivly  overcome  in  kindergarten. 
Other  teachers  say  the  child  is  more  active,  wanting  to  be  kept 
busy  and  interested,  and  is  hard  to  make  conform  to  the  rigid 
rules  of  the  public  schools. 

But  all,  I  be!  eve,  are  of  one  mind  in  maintaining  that  the 
kindergarten  child  is  brighter,  more  self-reliant,  is  able  to  express 
himself  better,  and  has  the  power  of  observation  most  strongly 
developed.  He  does  not  dash  ahead  of  the  others,  but  is  given 
a  slow,  happy,  healthful  awakening  into  school  life,  and  the 
interest  awakened  keeps  him  alive,  and  ready  to  grapple  with 
new  thoughts  that  make  other  children  tremble. 

If  the  kindergarten  did  nothing  but  give  the  child  self-confi- 
dence, it  would  be  doing  its  full  share. 


TOPICAL  STUDIES. 


LESSON  I. 
The  Service  of  Psychologry  to  the  Teacher. 

PSYCHOLOGY  should  be  studied  because  of  its  immense  prac- 
tical value  to  the  teacher. 

(fi)  By  means  of  psychological  inquiry  the  teacher  can  ascer- 
tain the  contents  of  a  child's  mind  on  entering  school. 

(h)  By  means  of  psychological  tests  the  teacher  can  accu- 
•ly  determine  just  what  any  child's  capacities  are,  especially 
th<,'  most  important  functions,  such  as  memory,  attention,  judg- 
ment and  comparison. 

('/•;)  When  the  teacher  thus  knows  the  powers  and  capacities  of 
his  pupils,  he  can  form  a  curriculum  of  studies  suited  to  the  best 
development  of  the  children  under  his  care. 

ffj)  The  teacher  who  is  a  student  of  psychology  soon  learns 
that  the  development  of  children  in  mind  as  well  as  in  body  al- 
ways obeys  certain  general  laws;  if  these  laws  are  not  conformed 
to.  mental  defects  will  occur ;  only  in  conscientiously  following 
these  laws  can  the  child  be  developed  in  the  most  rapid,  most 
healthful,  most  complete  manner. 


LESSON  IL 

Psychology  Defined  and  Described. 

THE  business  of  psychology  is  to  tell  us  what  the  mind  is— to 
tell  us  what  the  mind  does ;  how  the  mind  behaves  under  different 
conditions  and  circumstances;  how  it  is  affected  by  different 
states  of  bodily  condition,  and  how  it  in  turn  affects  the  body.  — 
Does  the  mind  act  during  sleep  ?  —  If  so,  under  what  conditions?— 

(408) 


404  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Does  the  mind  become  fatigued  ?  —  How  can  it  best  recover  from 
fatigue?— In  how  far  is  the  mind  in  its  activities  affected  by  the 
condition  of  the  weather,  by  the  season  of  the  year,  by  the  food 
supply  ?  —  What  is  the  best  time  of  day  for  vigorous  mental  work  ? 
—  These  are  a  few  of  the  many  questions  Psychology  must  answer 

for  the  teacher. 

Descriptive  Psychology,  Comparative  Psychology ,  Laboratory 
Psychology,  Physiological  Psychology,  Abnormal  Psychology. 

The  student  of  Psychology  must  investigate  with  an  unbiased 
mind— must  seek  for  truth  and  truth  alone.  —  "  First  describe, 
then  explain  "  is  ever  the  true  order  of  procedure. 


LESSON  III. 
Methods  of  Psychology. 

ALL  methods  of  inquiry  are  becoming  more  and  more  exact,  be- 
coming more  scientific.  —  Psychology  a  more  exact  science  than 
formerly.  —  The  phenomena  of  mind  admit  of  treatment  by  the 
modern  scientific  method. 

The  introspective  method— the  necessity  of  its  employment.  — 
It  has  many  disadvantages.  — Does  not  embrace  the  entire  field 

of  mental  facts. 

The  objective  method  necessary  to  supplement,  correct  and 
corroborate  the  introspective.  —  The  laboratory  methods  of 
modern  experimental  Psychology  an  absolute  necessity,  espe- 
cially in  the  study  of  children.  —  Apparatus  needed.  —  Psychology 
a  science  of  fact,  its  questions  are  questions  of  fact. 


LESSON  IV. 
The  Connection  Between  Body  and  Mind. 

A  RECIPROCAL  relation— mind  affects  body,  and  body  affects 
mind.  —  Effects  of  change  in  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  blood 
supply .  — Effects  of  tobacco  on  mental  activity  and  physical  de- 
velopment. —  Memory  as  related  to  physical  condition.  —  Munster- 
berg's  experiment  with  reference  to  the  influence  of  drugs,  stimu- 


TOPICAL  STUDIES.  105 

lants,  and  narcotics  upon  the  psychical  processes.  —  Mental  ac- 
tivity as  affecting  the  circulation  of  the  blood.  —  Effects  of  fear, 
anger,  grief,  anxiety. 

LESSON  V. 
The  Nervous  System. 

THE  function  of  the  nervous  system.  —  The  nerve  elements  de- 
scribed.—The  spinal  cord  as  a  well  organized  nervous  center— as 
a  pathway  from  the  brain. 

LESSON  VI. 
The  Brain  and  its  Functions. 

THE  four  general  divisions  of  the  brain : 

(1)  The  medulla  described  and  its  functions  stated. 

(2)  Thepofls. 

(3)  The  cerebellum,  or  little  brain  and  its  functions. 

(4)  The  cerebrum,  or  brain  proper. 

Right  and  left-handednessas  related  to  the  right  and  left  hem- 
ispheres of. the  brain.  —The  white  and  gray  matter.  — Size  of  the 
human  brain  as  compared  with  the  brain  of  various  animals.— 
Growth  of  brain- weight.  —  Intelligence  as  dependent  on  the 
amount  of  brain  surface.  — Experiments  with  a  brainless  frog. 


LESSON  VII. 

The  Brain  and  its  Functions  (Continued). 
THE  importance  of  the  cerebrum  as  the  basis  of  mental  activi- 
ty. —  The  functions  of  different  portions  of  the  brain  surface.  —  The 
center  of  vision.  —  The  speech  center.  —  Aphasia.  —  Agraphia. — 
The  center  of  hearing.  —  The  effect  of  loss  of  brain  tissue. 


LESSON   VIII. 

Sensation. 

DEFINITION  of  sensation.  — Method  of  arousing  tne  brain  cen- 
ters to   activity.  — Importance  of  sensation   to  other    mental 


406  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

processes.  —  Necessity  of  educating  the  senses.  — All  education 
begins  with  education  of  the  senses.  — Necessity  of  sensation 
to  the  motor  impulses. — If  the  infant  experiences  no  sen- 
sations he  never  moves.  —  Sensory  paralysis  will  always  cause 
motor  paralysis.  —  Elements  of  sensation.  —  End  organs  of  sense. 
—  Number  of  senses.  —  Sensations  of,  taste  and  smell  minutely 
described  and  experiments  suggested. 


LESSON  IX. 
Sensation  (Continued). 

THE  temperature  sense.  — Heat  and  cold  spots.  — Effects  of 
chemical,  mechanical  and  electrical  stimulations  on  these  heat 
and  cold  spots.  — Temperature  sensations  as  dependent  on  certain 
conditions. —  Sensations  of  pressure. —  Sensations  of  contact. — Ex- 
periments suggested.  —  Methods  of  testing  these  two  senses.  —  The 
fineness  of  the  pressure  sense.  —  Experiments  in  localizing  touch 
sensations. 


LESSON  X. 
Sensation  (Continued). 

THE  muscle  sense.  —  Organic  sensations. — Joint  and  tendon 
sense.  —  Sensations  by  means  of  which  we  judge  the  position  of  the 
body  as  a  whole. — Experiments.  —  Sensations  of  rotation.  —  Ex- 
periments. 


LESSON   XI. 
Sensation  (Continued). 


VISION.  —  The  eye  described.  —  The  blind  spot.  —  Experiments. — 
The  point  of  clearest  vision.  —  Experiments.  — Rivalry  of  the  ret- 
ina of  the  two  eyes.  —  Illustrations  and  experiment.  —  Effect  of 
color  on  apparent  size.  —  Colorblindness. 


TOPICAL  STUDIES.  '         407 

LESSON  XII. 

Sensation  (Continued).       « 

HEARING.  —  The  ear  described . — The  tira e-rate  of  hearing.—  Im- 
portance of  hearing  to  mental  development.  — Various  tests  and 
experiments. 

LESSON   XIII. 
Development  of  the  Senses. 

BY  what  process,  in  what  order,  from  what  beginnings, 
through  what  stages  does  the  child's  mind  develop  and  mature 
its  powers  of  sense-perception?  — The  first  sensations.  — The  order 
in  which  the  various  senses  unfold.  —The  successful  teacher  is  the 
sense  teacher. 


LESSON  XIV. 
Development  of  the  Senses  (Continued). 

METHODS  of  training  the  senses  illustrated.— The  importance 
of  training  the  powers  of  observation.  —  School  excursions.  — Na- 
ture study.  — The  object  lesson.  — In  what  does  the  real  value  of 
the  object  lesson  consist  ?  —  Use  of  concrete  objects  instead  of  rep- 
resentatives, advantageous.— Use  of  apparatus.— The  school 
museum.  — In  training  the  observation  powers  of  the  pupil  four 
things  are  accomplished : 

(1)  The  child's  knowledge  is  made  more  accurate  and  clearly 
defined. 

(2)  His  knowledge  is  made  more  comprehensive  and  complete. 

(3)  His  mental  power  and  intellectual  capacity  are  developed. 

(4)  Acquisition  of  knowledge  made  pleasant  and  delightful. 


LESSON   XV. 
The  Contents  of  a  Child's  Mind  on  Entering  School. 

How  can  one  ascertain  the  contents  of  the  child's  mind? — The 
first  endeavor  by  an  association  of  Berlin  teachers.— Similar  work 


408         *    PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

at  Annaberg  and  Planen. —  G.  Stanley  Hall's  investigations  in  the 
Boston  school^ —  Superintendent  Greenwood's  study  of  Kansas 
City  children.  —  Guiding  ideas  in  such  investigations. 


LESSON  XVI. 
The  Illusions  of  Sense. 

DEFINITION  of  an  illusion.  —  Illusions  as  distinguished  from 
hallucination.  —  Illusions  of  sight  (illustrated).  —  The  proof- 
reader's illusion.  —  Illusion  of  touch.  —  Illusions  of  smell,  taste 
and  hearing.  —  Hallucinations. 


LESSON  XVII. 
Habit. 

Philosophy  of  habit.  —  Practical  effects  of  habit: 

(1)  Habit  always  diminishes  the  amount  of  conscious  atten- 
tion with  which  our  acts  are  performed. 

(2)  Habitual  movements  are  less  fatiguing  than  other  ac- 
tivities. 

(3)  Habitual  activities  performed  with  less  effort  and  in  less 
time  than  other  actions. 

(4)  Habitual  movements  are  more  precise  and  accurate. 


LESSON  XVIII. 
Attention. 

ATTENTION  as  a  fundamental  mental  process.  —  Attention  de- 
fined and  illustrated.  —  Voluntary  attention.  — Non-voluntary 
attention.  — How  does  an  act  of  attention  contribute  to  mental 
growth?  — Reasoning  and  reflection  as  dependent  on  attention.— 
Acts  of  will  as  dependent  on  attention.  —  Attention  as  affecting 
the  time-rate  of  the  mental  processes.  — The  doctrine  of  interest. 


TOPICAL  STUDIES.  409 

LESSON  XIX. 
Association  of  Ideas. 

WHAT  is  meant  by  "  association  of  ideas."  —  Illustrations. — 
How  explained.  —  The  function  of  association  in  education.  —  The 
time-rate  of  associations. 


LESSON  XX. 
Memory. 

THE  three  steps  of  memory:  (a)  Retention;  (b)  Reproduc- 
tion; (c)  Recognition.  —  No  "  memory  center  "  in  the  cortex  of 
the  brain.  —  What  is  meant  by  good  memory?  —  How  may  mem- 
ory be  improved  and  trained?  — The  physiological  conditions  of 
good  memory.  — Amnesia  or  loss  of  memory. 


LESSON  XXI. 
Imagination. 

IMAGINATION  defined  and  illustrated.  — The  two  kinds  of  imagi- 
nation.—  Reproduction. —  Construction.  —  Four  types :  (a)  Visual 
type;  (b)  Tactile  type;  (c)  Auditory  type;  (d)  Motor  type. 
Necessity  of  cultivating  the  imagination.  —  How  can  it  be  trained? 


LESSON  XXII. 
Reasoning-. 

REASONING  defined  and  illustrated.  — Implicit  reasoning.— 
Children's  reasoning. —  The  development  of  reasoning  in  children. 
—  What  studies  best  serve  this  function?  — Curiosity  must  neces- 
sarily precede  reasoning.  —  Inductive  reasoning.  — The  scientific 
method.  —  Deductive  reasoning. 


LESSON  XXIII. 
Development  of  Will. 
IMPORTANCE  for  the  teacher. —  How  volition  develops.  — The 


410  PRACTICAL  LESSONS  IN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

first  beginnings  of  will.  —  Four  classes  of  movements  as  manifest- 
ing different  stages  of  will  development: 

(1)  Impulsive  movements. 

(2)  Reflex  movements. 

(3)  Instinctive  movements. 

(4)  Ideational  movements. 

Movements  as  imitative,  expressive  and  deliberative. 


LESSON  XXIV. 

Time  Relations  of  Mental  Phenomena. 
THE  rapidity  of  thought,  how  measured  ?  —  Conditions  affecting 
the  time-rate  of  mental  processes.  —  Results  of  various  measure- 
ments and  tests. 


LESSON  XXV. 

Methods  of  Testing  and  Measuring  the  Mental  Faculties, 
Especially  Memory  and  Attention  in  School  Children. 

How  mental  faculties  are  tested  and  measured. — Illustration 
of  tests  used  on  memory,  attention,  suggestibility.  — Object  of 
such  tests  and  measurements, 


LESSON  XXVI. 

Child-Study:    The  Basis  of  Exact  Pedagogical  Method. 
THE  importance  and  necessity  of  studying  children. —  Requisites 
for  such  study.  — Methods.  — Professor  Russell's  Work.  — Bow- 
ditch's  Measurements.  —  Bryan's   Experiments.— The   measure- 
ments of   Milwaukee  and  St.  Louis  school  children.  — How  to 
make  child-study  effective.  — Practical  benefits  of  child-study. 
Appendix.  — The  Kindergarten. 


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